Tennent's Mutual to be discontinued - Scotland yawns

Hardly surprising, but a wee bit sad, what had the potential to be something quite new and exciting, turned out to be a boring system of ten trillion votes, votes on what we should be voting about and then pretty much everyone lost any interest.
The question now is, do Tennent's continue to sponsor music in Scotland, will we see Triptych retrun (fingers crossed) or will they just stick with TITP and that's your lot. Only time will tell...

Here's what they had to say for themselves.

"Hi again,

We're hugely disappointed to announce that The Tennent's Mutual will not be continuing this year, due to the extremely challenging economic climate.

This has been an incredibly hard decision for us to make, not least because of the success enjoyed by The Tennent's Mutual in its inaugural year. Thanks to you, our innovative, Scotland-wide music venture surpassed all of our expectations, with over 8000 members creating a year-one music programme that featured many sold-out shows and intimate gigs from the likes of Glasvegas, Hot Chip, James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem), Teenage Fanclub, Los Campesinos!, Frightened Rabbit, King Creosote, Laura Marling and many more.

We're extremely proud of what The Tennent's Mutual achieved, and we're really disappointed to wind up what was a truly innovative, exciting undertaking. We'd like to extend a huge thank you to the thousands of you who got involved with The Tennent's Mutual.

Tennent's strong commitment to music and football in Scotland will continue through ongoing partnerships with T in the Park, of which T Break is a part, and the Scotland National Side. If you're interested in being kept up to date, please sign up at www.tennents.com

While there will be no live music programme from The Tennent's Mutual this year, it will bow out leaving a considerable legacy: as a not-for-profit venture, all ticket income from last year's shows - £47,014.86 - will be donated to Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy in Scotland: a charity which provides access to, and develops awareness of, music therapy across the country.

The work of Nordoff-Robbins (Scotland) is largely carried out on an outreach basis in hospitals, schools, residential health care settings, and community / voluntary sector projects. It works with children and adults with a wide range of special needs, including autistic spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, profound and multiple disabilities, those with mental health problems, people suffering from dementia, and those in palliative care.

This substantial charity donation from The Tennent's Mutual will benefit the Scottish music community through 2009 and beyond: it'll help sustain and develop Nordoff-Robbins' nation-wide music therapy services and accessibility.

In the meantime, www.tennentsmutual.com will be live until noon on Monday February 9th, and all questions, feedback, etc on today's announcement are welcome via the forum.

Once again, a huge thank you for your involvement with The Tennent's Mutual.

Best wishes,

The Tennent's Mutual"

Are all the new toys getting boring?

In the past few days DF have announced that Connect isn't going ahead this year, blaming the Credit Crunch as the main reason for it's absence this year, it made me think is the Scottish Music Scene getting a bit boring. Musically, no I would say it's probably the healthiest it's ever been, but with the demise of Connect and the snoozefest that is the Tennents's Mutual gigs, I found myself thinking how boring it's got. A couple of years ago we had Indian Summer, a vibrant up and coming festival, that got the whole boutique festival pretty much spot on, then being the greedy bugger that he is, Geoff Ellis and his evil empire stepped in stole all of their thunder with Connect. Admittedly I did jump on the Connect bandwagon (still went Indian Summer mind you), but the line-up that was offer at Inveraray Castle was quite literally mouth watering. then what happened, well Ellis's new bay kills off Indian summer and then Connect becomes some kind of poor man's T in the Park. Brilliant, just brilliant.

Next up Tennents cancel Triptych, a truly unique festival that offered up a variety of different acts that you wouldn't necessarily see in Glasgow, plus they offered up special one off shows, ie pretty much any of the gigs held at the Tramway (why is this venue not used more often??). To replace it with Tennent's Mutual, which sounded new and exciting when it first came out, but after months of pointless voting, the first gig (excluding their launch nights) that the presented us with was the Shred Your Face (or something like that), featuring Los Campesinos, No Age and Born Ruffians. Yes that was a decent enough line-up, but it was the same line-up that was also touring the UK, so it was hardly as if we were getting something all the different. To be fair some of the gigs that they lined up were not too shabby, although having said that I didn't really see the merit in having bands play in Paisley Town Hall. if most of your punters are coming from Glasgow to go to a gig, why not just have it there. Anyway, those gigs were way back last year and now i find myself somewhat bored by the whole concept, if I have to go through another vote I think I may well die of boredom. Having had a look at their website they too seem to have given up the ghost, their news section is pretty appalling, the forum is merely a platform for unsigned bands to 'big themselves up, shame nobody is listening though.

Is all of this a bad thing, well for me I guess not, as long as there is still a demand for live music, which I believe there is, what with O2 and HMV both getting more involved with their investments in various venues. My big hope for this year is to see promoters thinking more about the pricing of tickets, scrap or even just incorporate some of the booking fee into the ticket and the return of Indian Summer, a boy can but dream....