BBC – Concert Promoter, Radio1′s Big Weekend.

It’s taken me almost a week to write this post as my work life balance is very much tipping the wrong way at the moment.

Last weekend I attended Radio 1′s big weekend, which for those of you who don’t know is a free two day festival event with multiple bands playing over the duration of the weekend, it’s hosted by a national UK radio station called “Radio 1″, which is owned and run by the B.B.C

First of all the event it’s self, wow, what an amazing event, the best orginised festival I’ve been to by far, all aspects of it where run like a swiss clock – all other festivals and gigs should look at how this was done, it was fantastic. The acts themselves where a great mix of new up and coming (unheard of) tallent, to current “stars” on a set of stages in tents hosted around the venue, which was this year in Swindon. The acts ranged from DJ based music, through rap, R and B (debatable that these acts are called R and B) dance music, pop music and a few more rockier style bands.

Pretty much every one I went to see where good,  Basement Jaxx stood out for a great live performance with a great mixture of live musicians and electronic/sequenced music. Great live set and good crowd pleasers. There was something there for everyone no matter what type of music you had. We also had really nice weather which made it all the better.

The only negative aspect is that each band tended to do a 20-30 minute set, wich 40-50 minute gaps between them due to setup/take down time, (ironicly the state of live music today where multiple bands do shorter sets than the setup time they take) I’d like to have seen longer sets to get to know bands you don’t know more, and enjoy the ones you do better. A fantastic weekend event though and all free !

The interesting queston is that this was all setup, funded and promoted by the BBC, which is %100 funded from the licenses payer’s fee. The BBC stands for “British Broadcasting Corperation” who’s function is to provide broadcast information and programming, which they do a fantastic job of, with TV, Radio, Internet content. However I’m not quite sure (despite how good it was) the BBC’s job is a concert orginiser or promotor, the BBC is British “Broadcasting” Corperation, I don’t quite see how concert promotor fits into that description of it’s services. Looking around, I can only blindly estimate that the cost of the two day even was 100 thousand pounds -  don’t know. Should this ammount of money be paid for by the whole of the UK TV licenser payers funding ? it’s a really tricky thing as I’m so impressed with how well everything was done and how much of a good time I had, yet especially in the financial climate we are currently in, or just in general cannot see how it is the job of a national broadcasting company which is a public service copmany to put on and promote concerts with our money ?

Bit of a negative comment I know, but it’s only food for thought.