For me, there is just something that just doesn’t seem right about Triple J’s “J Awardâ€. Perhaps it could reflect my changing tastes in music or my skepticism about the quality of recent Australian releases.
If you look at the bands that get nominated for J Awards you cannot help but note that their names sound very familiar. Is this award really founded on quality Australian releases, or is a more modern version of the “Triple J Hall of Fame� It seems that all the bands who get nominated are Triple J staple artists – John Butler Trio, Silverchair, Hilltop Hoods. Occasionally debutant recording artists get their LP nominated (The Grates, Josh Pyke, The Vasco Era), but for the most part it is band’s who have previously released an allegedly landmark record. In this regard, the J Award can seem retrospective. A quick look at the criteria for being nominated.
The criteria: The J Award is for an album of outstanding achievement as an Australian musical work of art - for its creativity, innovation, musicianship and contribution to Australian music. As quoted on http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/jaward/.
In my view, some of the albums nominated for this award hardly meet this criteria, and I suspect the last criteria actually is the heaviest in weight – contribution to Australian music. This is what I’ve called the ‘retrospective factor’ and I believe that this has much to do with the nomination of some of these albums.
Indeed, if you compare the results of the J Award to the results of Triple J’s own listener submitted ‘Album of the Year’ poll for the same year, you’ll note that no J Award winner has ended up as the highest rating Australian record in ‘Album of the Year’. In 2005, the J Award went to Wolfmother for their debut, but The Panics “Sleeps Like a Curse” was thought a better quality record in the end of the year poll. In 2006, Hilltop Hoods “The Hard Road” won the J Award, but ended up tenth on the ‘Album of the Year ‘ poll, beaten by 4 other Australian albums. Does this tell us something about the J Award? We’ll probably need to wait a few years to see if the JJJ judging panel has their finger on the pulse of what their listeners consider to be the prominent Australian releases of each year.
However, this is not my main beef with the award. The point that I am leading towards is that I do not think the award goes far enough. I feel like the J Award simply rewards those bands who already have established audiences, and their albums, regardless of quality, get nominated wholly due to the band’s history, but not on the album’s individual merit. I think it would be great if the award was simply limited to ‘best Australian debut album’, which would go further to promoting emerging new artists, and some way to getting them an established audience. Perhaps Triple J could even create a separate award for this category.
However, on this point, I do realise that Triple J Unearthed goes some way to promoting unsigned artists, and I think that’s a great thing (however, I do have some issues with this as well – on first blush, and with knowing little about how they work, it does seem that the chart listings on JJJ Unearthed can be easily manipulated). However, in reality it just acts as an Australian specific myspace. An award like the J Award is a great marketing tool, and a great chance for exposure.
Perhaps I’m just a crank and don’t know my arse from my elbow. Or perhaps I’m just letting my music cynicism get the best of me, and writing off albums that I’ve premeptively judged. I do admit that I haven’t heard a lot of the albums that have been nominated (and consequently, does that give me any right to criticise them? Probably not).
These are just some thoughts that have been gathering in the corner of my head for some time, and I thought I’d share them with you.
