The 2011 Scottish New Music Awards and Scottish Music Industry Awards

It looks like these awards were more of a fix than normal but to be honest all the awards I have come across have been largely suspect. This shouldn’t be a surprise as they are no more than an extension of who gets on the radio, in the press or to play at festivals. Slightly more worryingly the bloggers who felt themselves to be outside all of this have largely been assimilated in. As many others have said any attempt to have an awards system will have to be flawed on many levels and therefore there simply shouldn’t be any. Avalanche was nominated in these awards under best  MUSIC RETAILER of the YEAR but when they phoned I simply explained I didn’t believe in awards like this and would not be attending. Despite being short listed three times previously I even refused to take part in this year’s Music Week awards which are the industry leader.

It will be interesting to see when the next set of dodgy winners are announced if they are attacked quite so vehemently. At the moment I still haven’t been able to find out who won my category. Coincidentally I have the Avalanche 2011 awards to announce

Best newcomers    Star Wheel Press

Best band            The Savings and Loan 

Best live band       Kid Canaveral

Best label             Fence

Best festival          Home Game

Best album           Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – Everything’s Getting Older

Best in-store         Frightened Rabbit

Best acoustic set   Twilight Sad

God like genius award  Dan Willson (Withered Hand)

Lifetime achievement award – joint winners King Creosote and Ballboy

etc etc as I simply make up awards to give to my friends and people I like

So band that have best survived the tag “the Scottish Arcade Fire” – Broken Records

Most missed – Saint Jude’s Infirmary

Best comeback (album)   TV21

Best comeback (gig)       Scars

The Avalanche “This band deserve to be huge” award to There Will Be Fireworks

Then I start to worry I’ve missed out a few friends so I make up a few more categories and it’s done. Just a bit of fun unless I then claim it is the result of a huge poll of my customers and get a double page spread in The Skinny and a feature on the radio (that’s proper radio something like Vic or Ally).

One category I’ll leave to your imagination – Band that best jumped on the Mumford and Sons bandwagon.