TOTALLY IRISH

Pete the Roz of Danceline Records has no time at all for those who say the Irish music industry is as big as it'll ever be.

"If you take Danceline, Round Tower, Solid, they're the real Irish record labels and there's plenty of scope for them to expand. You look at the success of Finbar Wright, Sharon Shannon, A Woman's Heart - the point there is that Irish music is liked and Irish music is bought."

The primary issue for Pete, as you might expect with the owner of a small label, is radio.

"Danceline would see it as the central problem," he says. His recommendations on how to get around this problem include that old reliable, the radio content rule. "You have the quota system in Canada, which everybody is probably bored to tears hearing about by now. But the point is that this has absolutely boomed the Canadian music industry, and as an add-on to that, the Americans have signed every Canadian with two legs and three chords! (Laughs) And I don't know if legislation is necessary. If there was a quota system, DJs would gladly adhere to it."

He also recommends bands and artists to "keep knocking", a policy which has worked admirably in Danceline's case with their Signals compilation album getting played in its entirely on 98FM. Yes, you heard, 98FM.

With leaps forward like that being made, all is most certainly not lost!

Richard Glynn of the Federation of Musicians supports J.I.M. alright. But he's "not too sure if there's much room for expansion in the industry. There's a hell of a lot of unemployed musicians out there.

So what does the Federation have to offer?

"We do a hell of a lot of sponsorship - for instance we have promoted the bands in the Green for the past twelve weeks; that, in itself, takes care of fifteen to sixteen musicians. Then, in the other areas, we put small groups out working in the afternoons, entertaining old folks."

More far-reaching, perhaps, is their involvement with MusicBase in the production of the Totally Irish pilot programme to be given, free of charge to independent radio stations around the country, for broadcast.

The Fed have supplied £2,000 for the production of this programme, which it is hoped will give rise to a series, containing all genres of Irish music, interviews and so on.

The first thing that springs to mind when Lir's manager David Reilly is asked what initiatives he would like to see the Government undertaking related to the music industry's black economy, which could, he says, be easily legitimised.

"There's a lot of people on the live register who may be somewhat involved in the music industry" - he's referring more to people on the technical side of the process than actual artists - "and I think that some kind of system, maybe FAS-orientated, could easily be set up to bridge the gap between what they're making dolewise and what they're making in the business, and so take them off the dole. If the Government did sit down with the music industry generally, I think they could do quite a lot towards reducing these types of problems and at the same time provide ongoing education and experience for people who want to get into the industry."

Where radio is concerned, David is of the opinion that bands don't do enough to get played. Merely sending in your single is not enough. He advocates the hard sell, especially the use of independent promoters like Mike O'Hare, Eoin Holmes and Dan Oggly, who "go around plugging the thing and forcing them to play it".

This approach has worked for Lir, who have got sufficient plays on the independent stations, and for an ex-major label band, who shall remain nameless, to whom David recommended it, and who have since done very well airplay-wise. The independent promoter is a very important part - "and not an expensive part", he says - of the process of getting played on radio and television.

One area in which David himself is leading the way, and into which he can see Irish people moving successfully, is the export of music business management and legal skills. "Irish people are becoming a lot more professional. We've got to learn the ropes, develop good negotiating and speaking skills and so forth, and then there's any amount of opportunity for people to make co-promotion arrangements with people abroad," he says.

The MD of Sony Ireland John Sheehan, who is also head of the PPI, is concerned about the impact of radio programming. "The classic hits format is of no benefit, as far as I can see," he says. "In fact it's a negative influence."

He emphasises that the major multinational labels can contribute by signing local acts, citing Sony's "extensive commitment" to Emperors of Ice Cream as an example. He also wonders about the possibility of setting up an alternative new music station or stations.

"This could be paid for from RTE's licence revenue," he says, "or from levies paid to the IRTC by the independent stations. In that context good new music might get a lot more exposure."

Keith Donald of MusicBase strongly supports the idea first floated by Hot Press in the 'Think Ireland - Think Music' submission five years ago: to extend Section Two of the 1969 Finance Act to cover record producers, in recognition of their creative role in the process of recording. This would give producers tax-exemption on their royalties and go a long way towards encouraging both Irish and foreign producers to use our studios, with a number of beneficial knock-on effects.

"An awful lot of studio use is producer-led," he explains, "and if a producer says 'I'm based in Ireland and I have a good working relationship with Studio X, come over and record here', it could also be pointed out to the artist that if they make the record here and form a company here and export the finished master tapes to the parent record company, it's very tax-advantageous."

With respect to getting exposure for Irish music on Irish radio, MusicBase are, Keith says, "not just talking about it, we're doing something." The Totally Irish pilot programme, he hopes, will give rise to a series of such programmes.

That initiative notwithstanding, Keith agrees that there should be a set percentage of Irish material played on all radio stations. However, he notes the subtle difference between a legally enforced radio content rule, as seen in Canada, and an 'agreement' between the Government, the music industry and the radio stations, monitored by an independent body, as seen in France.

Keith would also like to see assistance being given to artists going abroad for their first tours and showcase gigs. "These tours inevitably lose money," he comments. "I'd like to see some kind of fund set up. It could be a combination of statutory funds and sponsorship. It would take some setting up, but I'd love to see it happen because it's a real bottleneck for people trying to get their product exported."

Other MusicBase projects include developing the Management and Music Programme (which Keith instigated while on the Arts Council) at Senior College, Ballyfermot - he makes the point that Ireland has an excessively high artist to manager radio - and the setting up of a Musicians Available file and a Technicians Available file in MusicBase itself.

Despite being in a band which is more godlike than Jehovah himself, and therefore being on a collision course with unprecedented global fame and riches, Martin Healy of A House sees airplay as the key to more record sales. "Your average Joe Soap who listens to the radio at work, or whatever, and he goes around humming Right Said Fred, if he was to be exposed to something different, then after a couple of weeks he'll go around humming that and he'll buy it. It'd make a big difference in the live thing as well."

And no, he doesn't think that the withdrawal symptoms from Michael Bolton would be too much for the Great Irish Public to bear. "I think at that level that people are quite happy, really, to take whatever's fed them."