Given that Mr Yeah is mathematically challenged, he failed to mention the fact that a FoxFest weekend ticket, at only £10, costs you a mere 25 pence per artist. But do not let this low, low price fool you; it in no way reflects the quality of said artists nor the warmth of the welcome that awaits FoxFesters.

No; FoxFest is no cheap excuse for a weekend of overindulgence in the name of music appreciation. It is no less than a joyful celebration of the best unsigned music South East London and its environs has to offer. Plus it hosts some very talented visitors from across the water.

But don’t take my word for it. You can watch the Kooba TV FoxFest 2009 Special, listen to The Jonny & Alex Show live at FoxFest 2009, and read the FoxFest 2009 live blog (although they’re my words too) and make your own judgement.

If you like what you see and hear, buy a ticket, and we look forward to seeing you there.

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You can have your say on the proposals online, and it’s important that if you have come to rely on 6 Music as I have that you make sure you’re heard. From what is being said in the media, there’s a good chance that public feeling could reverse this recommendation. You should also join the Save BBC 6 Music group on Facebook, and spread the word via Twitter using the #saveBBC6Music tag.

My consumption of BBC output does not include sport, nor famous people congratulating each other on being wonderful in the guise of an interview. I do not care for those same celebrities ‘competing’ in mindless entertainment shows, nor for most drama – especially the drivel that is soap opera.

If BBC 6 Music closes I will almost wholly consume only news from the BBC – Today, Newsnight and Question Time. Although I believe this to be some of the best of the BBC’s work, and far superior to most commercial news programming, does it represent good value for my licence fee?

I understand and champion the fact that we pay into a central pot so that our money can collectively go further, but I do feel that too much of it is being spent on chasing ratings. BBC 6 Music, in contrast, provides a space in which people can teach each other about new genres and artists – a space that is offered by no other (non-Internet) radio station. This goes as much for listeners as it does presenters, who are encouraged to share the music they love.

Perhaps the most galling aspect of the consultation, therefore, is the fact that 6 Music is said by the BBC to play ‘pop music’. Taking this as a given, the review concludes that as Radio 1 and Radio 2 already play pop music there is no need for 6 Music.

This, however, is not my experience of the station, nor that of myriad people I have spoken to. I’m sure the same goes for the 100,000+ people who have joined the group on Facebook. Does the BBC Trust simply not understand what 6 Music is?

There is literally no other music station that I listen to because they all play – mainly or wholly – playlists dictated by advertisers and large record companies, rather than what presenters and producers think we haven’t heard before and might enjoy – or at least appreciate. BBC 6 Music is as close as we come to having something like Kooba Radio on a national scale, championing unsigned and unknown acts.

For this reason, I affectionately call the station ‘John Peel Radio’, and I think he would be appalled that BBC 6 Music, out of everything the BBC provides, is facing the axe. If BBC3 or Radio 1 were to go, people could access almost exactly identical programming elsewhere. Not so with BBC 6 Music; it does what the BBC should do – serve its listeners and funders, not the market.

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You can have your say on the proposals online. Here’s what I said about the only music radio station I can listen to.

I do not consume sport, most entertainment (eg famous people interviewing each other or ‘competing’ mindlessly) or most drama (eg soap operas) produced by the BBC. If BBC 6 Music closes I will almost wholly consume only news from the BBC – Today, Newsnight and Question Time. Is this good value for my licence fee? I understand that we pay into a central pot so our money goes further, but too much of it is being spent on chasing ratings. BBC 6 Music provides a space in which people can teach each other about new genres and artists – a space that is offered by no other radio station. There is literally no other music station that I listen to, because they mainly or wholly play what advertisers think listeners want to hear, rather than what presenters and producers think we haven’t heard before and might like to. I affectionately call the station ‘John Peel Radio’, and I think he would be appalled that BBC 6 Music, out of everything the BBC provides, is facing the axe. If BBC3 or Radio 1 were to go, people could access almost exactly identical programming elsewhere. Not so with BBC 6 Music; it does what the BBC should do – serve its listeners and funders, not the market.

If the award was for an outstanding contribution to the music industry then I wouldn’t be so indignant. Williams’ rise to solo fame on the shoulders of a manufactured pop group, the money he was able to demand for his services, and his ability to alter his persona and performance to ensure that he was as successful at the Glastonbury Festival as he was on Top of the Pops, demonstrated what was possible for the industry in the years leading up to the end of the 20th Century. But I fail to see in what way he has contributed to music.

And this is my criticism of the entire event; the BRIT Awards are not a celebration of music, they are a celebration of the industry. Just as the myriad polls that declared The Strokes’ ‘Is This It’ the best album of the 2000s, they conflate the ability to sell albums and fill column inches with artistic achievement. All of the winners have achieved stardom, but not one has done anything substantial for music:

• Dizzee Rascal: rap/mutilated hip-hop
• Lily Allen: girly pop
• JLS: talent show pop
• Kasabian: indie rock (apparently)
• Florence & the Machine: quirky girl pop
• Spice Girls: bad pop
• Jay-Z: just another rapper
• Lady GaGa: mainstream dance
• Oasis: Beatles rip off
• Elli Goulding: no idea, sorry

I want to reiterate that I’m not necessarily saying I think these ‘artists’ make bad music (although for the most part I do), simply that they have contributed little or nothing original to music as an art form.

Perhaps I’m making a mistake in thinking that these awards are meant to be about music itself (although in the case of the outstanding contribution award there can be no doubt). The BRIT Award website simply doesn’t say whether the winners received awards because they were the best singer or musician, or because they sold the most albums or singles.

However, the Awards are arranged by the British Phonographic Industry, an organisation which describes itself as “the representative voice of the UK recorded music business”. That is, the BPI promotes the industry on behalf of its membership, which includes the four major music companies: Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. As it boasts on its website, “BPI members account for approximately 90% of all recorded music sold in the UK”.

Let’s take another look at the winners and see if an answer begins to suggest itself:

• Dizzee Rascal: independent labels, but distributors include Universal and Sony
• Lily Allen: London Records (Warner Music) then Regal Recordings (Parlophone – EMI)
• JLS: Epic Records (Sony)
• Kasabian: RCA (Sony) and Columbia (Sony)
• Florence & the Machine: Island Records (Universal)
• Spice Girls: Virgin (Thorn EMI)
• Jay-Z: Roc-A-Fella (Universal), Priority (EMI), Def Jam (Universal)
• Lady GaGa: Interscope (Universal)
• Oasis: independents

Before I began researching this I really didn’t know who these acts were signed to – honest. I was confident I’d find information to back up my point though because it’s just too obvious that these events are nothing more than promotion for the big labels, a big pat on the back to the performers for bringing in the cash.

Possibly the most sickening element of the spectacle is the acts deluding themselves that they’re being rewarded for their artistic talent, but I suppose it’s not surprising when you consider the extent of their self belief; Lady “I’m so crazy” GaGa acts as if Madonna never simulated masturbation or the shagging of a black Jesus some 20 years ago.

Music shouldn’t be an industry in this sense, and it doesn’t need to be either. Listen to the latest edition of the Jonny & Alex Show and you’ll hear several great bands that haven’t needed a major label to produce wonderful music.

The success of Kooba Radio and similar efforts also proves we can distribute the unsigned music we love. The sad fact is, however, that most of the bands we showcase probably do aspire to be signed to one of those major labels.

PS If you’re still not convinced, consider the fact that Coldplay, Dido, and Duffy were amongst the nominations for the best album of the past thirty years.

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If you don’t know the band, I thoroughly recommend you watch VIRAL, a two minute film that has been made with such clarity of purpose that it I believe it succeeds in the considerable feat of representing what Breton is.

On film, as in their music, they have the confidence to shun the habit of specificity. Carl 2bob says they’ll never sound the same twice, and I think I’m inclined to agree. But I’m not sure that there isn’t something underlying all of what they do, that could be used to pull it together.

VIRAL exemplifies the source of my confusion. It pieces together finely cut slivers of Breton’s varied catalogue and drapes them around images of dedication to their cause and of the self belief that has to be what underpins the artist. On the one hand VIRAL communicates the diversity of the music they create, but on the other it shares with us just one idea: Breton.

It’s also like an episode of Art Attack that might have been shown on Channel 4 in the nineties at two o’clock in the morning and aimed at students.

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This has continued even after Lord Ashcroft promised to return to the UK from his home in Belize and pay UK income tax by the end of 2000, when he was made a peer.

David Cameron has said that, if elected, the Conservatives will “create a right of initiative nationally, where any petition that collects 100,000 signatures will be eligible to be formally debated in the House of Commons. Any petition with a million signatures will allow members of the public to table a Bill that could end up being debated and voted on by MPs”.

So Mr Cameron has provided us with his definition of significance; that sounds like a challenge.

The thing is, his research and conclusions have already been discredited, and the journal that published his work, the Lancet, has said it shouldn’t have. So what you have is a group of understandably upset parents who have, by continuing to support a man who has been shown to have been wrong in both his conduct and conclusions, unfortunately rendered themselves an ignorant mob. I understand why they need to believe, but I aso lament it.

In other news, a teenage girl was retrieved from the rubble of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, 15 days after the earthquake. She had survived by “drinking water from a  bath”. Rescuer JP Malaganne apparently considered this a “miracle”. The god of hydration works in mundane ways.

According to the rescuers on the scene they had arrived just in the nick of time. “I don’t think she could have survived even a few more hours,” said Rescuer Claude Fuilla, in no way aggrandising her role.

“She just said ‘Thank you’, she’s very weak, which suggests that she’s been there for 15 days,” said Samuel Bernes, head of the rescue team that discovered her. We can surmise from this that without some form of proof Mr Bernes would have entertained the idea that the young lady became stuck after crawling into the rubble for a bit of a lie down.

I also heard on the radio that someone on the medical ship where the girl was being attended to said that her survival was medically unexplainable. I simply don’t believe that’s true.

The latest one features the back of Jerry’s head, Carolyn who may or may not have been involved in some kind of scandal, a lesbian banging at the closet door, and a horny young man who calls his cock his ‘vote’ and looks something like a stretched out Bill Murray. The latter also annoyed me by saying ‘math class’ instead of mathS class’. Do US citizens do mathematic? No, they do fucking mathematics like the rest of us. Our ancestors weren’t happy with having a ‘new’ continent, they had to alter the language too. Splitters. Murderous, raping splitters.

If you enjoy the clips, I recommend the film Reefer Madness. It was intended as a warning to parents about the oh-so-frightening dangers of cannabis use, but was bought, re-cut and distributed as an ‘exploitation’ film. Today it’s sold as an invaluable piece of comedy, suggesting as it does that otherwise balanced middle class youngsters will become thieves, murderers and rapists once they smoke the deadly weed.

Another, similar film I saw once had guys scratching at their arms and sweating in their ‘need for weed’ after having smoked half a joint the previous day. It ended with the ‘pusher’ crashing his car. Whilst he lay in the wreckage – which had caught fire – bleeding, the cop stood at the top of the embankment with some local youths, surveying the destruction that is so often wreaked by the most evil of drugs. He said to the kids, “See what can happen when you smoke marijuana?”, and turned his back on the dying hoodlum.

What a message. What a culture. What a country.

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As I write, the group on Facebook has over 5,000 members, around 30 admins, and I have no idea how many suggested artists. Unfortunately, I believe it is this level of interest that dooms the experiment to failure.

The RATM campaign was coordinated by two people and had a single clear aim – to make a song number one in order to send a message about the dominance of TV talent shows and the death of the UK charts as a regular source of good music – and asked supporters to do just one thing. That is why it was successful.

The unsigned artists campaign, in contrast, asks too much of too many people and is not as easy to communicate to those who aren’t already invested in this kind of action.

Above all, it misses the point that the RATM campaign was a negative campaign. All those who bought ‘Killing in the Name’ did so as an act of protest. It may seem that it was positive as it sought to make a song number one, but it was a positive means to a negative end – to stop the winner of that TV talent show yet again reaching number one at christmas.

I’m sure the coordinators of the unsigned bands campaign will argue that it’s also an attempt to send a message, but there’s simply no clear recipient. It will also suffer because everyone will remain loyal to the artist they suggest, and if they don’t like the song that’s picked they just won’t buy it. The strength of feeling against that TV talent show sadly isn’t matched in this case, and it was that which drove us to come together in December 2009.

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