To access the available transcript please use the following link: https://bit.ly/3sOC6ev
Jesse is a musician and producer best known as the bass player of the British pop-rock band, Keane. Alongside performance, Jesse has dedicated his voice as a campaigner for music accessibility in schools. Including a recent interview with the BBC lobbying the government to support and fund music in schools.
He also founded and runs a community arts centre called Old Jet on an abandoned U.S. Air Force base in the English countryside near Suffolk.
We discuss how collaboration and community are key in the music industry, and how education today supports but also sometimes fails young musicians and artists.
To access the available transcript please use the following link: https://bit.ly/3sOC6ev
Jesse is a musician and producer best known as the bass player of the British pop-rock band, Keane. Alongside performance, Jesse has dedicated his voice as a campaigner for music accessibility in schools. Including a recent interview with the BBC lobbying the government to support and fund music in schools.
He also founded and runs a community arts centre called Old Jet on an abandoned U.S. Air Force base in the English countryside near Suffolk.
We discuss how collaboration and community are key in the music industry, and how education today supports but also sometimes fails young musicians and artists.
Matt Moseley:
Hello, and welcome to the Teach Inspire Create podcast. I'm your host, Matt Moseley, chief examiner for art and design at the UAL Awarding Body. In this series, I'll be talking to artists and creative industry leaders under the lenses of three main themes: teaching, inspiring and creating. Today, my guest is Jesse Quin. Jesse is a musician and producer, best known as the bass player of the British rock band Keane. Alongside performance, Jesse has dedicated his voice as a campaigner for music accessibility in schools, including a recent interview with the BBC, where he lobbied the government to support and fund music in primary schools.
Matt Moseley:
He also founded and runs a community art centre called Old Jet on an abandoned US Air Force base in the English countryside near Suffolk. In our conversation today, Jesse and I will be discussing the music industry and how education supports but also sometimes fails young artists. We'll also discuss the importance and value of working collaboratively, and how do you know when something's good and when to stop?
Matt Moseley:
There is a transcript available for this episode. Please click the link in the episode description so you can read as you listen.
Speaker 2:
Teach.
Speaker 3:
Teach.
Speaker 4:
Teach.
Speaker 5:
Teach.
Speaker 6:
Teach.
Speaker 7:
Teach.
Matt Moseley:
Hi, Jesse. How are you doing?
Jesse Quin:
I'm all right. How are you?
Matt Moseley:
Yeah, very well, thank you. Thanks very much for inviting us out to your wonderful studio here at Old Jet in Suffolk. We are really excited to be here, so thank you very much.
Jesse Quin:
Thanks for coming.
Matt Moseley:
Who or what is your inspirational teacher or education experience?
Jesse Quin:
I was pretty lucky at school because we had a really good head of music there, called Richard Hanley. And one of the things they did at my school, which I thought was genius, was if you were a bit disruptive, instead of just saying, "Right, you've got to stand in the corridor, you've got to stand in the corner," they'd send you to whatever department you were actually interested in. What was lovely about that was it felt like it didn't matter. Nothing mattered other than that you wanted to do it. And if you did want to do it, they'd facilitate it and they'd make it happen for you.
Matt Moseley:
So was school the first space that music came into your life, or was music in your life anyway, outside of school?
Jesse Quin:
Yeah, my dad was a very, very sort of practical non-musical sound engineer. So I had music sort of indirectly through him. And my mum is a singer. When my mum was nine months pregnant, they were working at a festival. My dad was the site manager and my mum was basically the cook for the crew. And she was like, "Right, I've gone into labor," and they just went to the nearest hospital, had me, and kind of went straight back to work.
Matt Moseley:
So do you feel that kind of normalised the idea of being a musician as a potential career?
Jesse Quin:
Yeah. I guess you probably start to get interested in whatever you're exposed to a lot, don't you, when you're young? But a lot of parents say, "Oh, you've got to have a backup plan. And it's so hard to do this, that and the other." There's probably a lot more industries than we think that are really difficult to get into, where you'd never say that to a kid. You'd never say, "Oh, you want to be a chartered accountant. You got to have a backup plan. You should think about being a musician. At least training there."
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. Well, they should, shouldn't they? There should be an element of, "Have you also thought about being a rapper?" That should happen more.
Jesse Quin:
That was definitely never a thing for me. The first instrument I got interested in was the drums, and because of his sound engineering, I'd be on jobs with him, and if there was a drum kit set up anywhere, he'd be like, "Get on that drum kit, quick."
Matt Moseley:
Right.
Jesse Quin:
You know, "Get on, get on there."
Matt Moseley:
Building that sort repetition. And the element, I guess, of practice.
Jesse Quin:
When you're really young, I think that's the time that you develop a confidence in certain things and that you have for life. But I feel like with music, because I was so encouraged with the drums, I feel like I could sit down at a drum kit, even though I wouldn't call myself a professional drummer, I feel like I could sit down at a drum kit on any stage in the world and feel totally confident and comfortable because I was always encouraged and always encouraged to do it. Whereas, if you said, "Get up and sing," probably that would fill me with dread.
Matt Moseley:
So do you think you consciously made a decision to go into the music industry or did it just kind of happen organically through the relationships that you were making and the friends that you were beginning to meet? Or was there a moment where you thought, "This is the direction for me," and then actively pursued it?
Jesse Quin:
I think probably from my mid teens. Up until that point, it was just like, it was like playing, it was like a toy. I really like playing with the drums or a train set. It was only when I got to sort of my mid teens that I thought, what will I do when I leave home and school? And I'd love to do that.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. So when was your first band?
Jesse Quin:
10? 11?
Matt Moseley:
Oh, wow. Right.
Jesse Quin:
I was brought up going to a Baptist church that had a rock and roll band. It was a pretty weird place, but in a good way. It was a lot of sort of arguing about art and sex and stuff like that. They were basically a bunch of old hippies. But they had this band and they'd basically just get me up to play the drums the whole time, from the age of about eight, because I could hold down a straight 4/4 beat. And then when I started high school, I was already a really good drummer so all the older kids were like, "Ooh, you're all right, you are. You should join our band." So my poor parents were like, "Oh no, what have we done? He's 10 or 11. He's just gone into high school and he's already playing with all the 16 year old's bands."
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. So how important do you think it is for someone's musical development to start playing with other people as soon as possible?
Jesse Quin:
I think for me, the real joy in music comes from making music with other people. I feel like you can get a lot of enjoyment out of tinkering in the studio and noodling around and building tracks up and stuff. But the real kind of satisfying enjoyment comes from playing with other people. And a lot of musicians, I think you haven't had that kind of... Haven't had someone pushing them to do that or get up on stage or whatever.
Jesse Quin:
I think everyone knows musicians and artists of all kinds who are working on their masterpiece that will never see the light of day and they don't want to play it to anyone. And for whatever reason, they don't have that confidence to just be like, all right, let's just make some music and see what happens. But that's where music comes from, for me. The origins of music are people making rhythms together. And it's never really sort of stemmed from, I don't know, a sort of very solitary thing.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. I think, particularly in this era, isn't it, that the idea of creatives kind of existing in a silo is sort of outdated, isn't it, really? Artists and designers and creatives and musicians come to spaces like Old Jet, don't they, to be immersed amongst a group of like-minded people? So what do you think is the major benefit of working collaboratively?
Jesse Quin:
I think that the reality is it's sort of like innocent theft. All art really is, is taking everything that you absorb and kind of channeling it into something new, isn't it? So you see a film and you think, "Oh, I really like that scene where there was a white horse against a black sky. But I also like this other film where there was a pink armchair against a blue wall," and you take the two and you end up with some weird new thing. And I think working with other people, you get that same effect.
Jesse Quin:
It's like you sit down and you've been playing the guitar for 20 years and that person's been playing the guitar for 20 years, but you've both been listening to different music, you've both got different instruments. And it's that process of you doing that together. You're taking something from what they do and they're taking something from what you do. It's not one plus one equals two, is it?
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. And so do you actively look for the opportunity to work with people who will push you out of your comfort zone? To explore things.
Jesse Quin:
I want to be as comfortable as possible. I'm 40. One of the things that I find quite frightening with making music is going into a room with other musicians and thinking that, "Oh, am I going to be able to contribute something that's in any way valuable to this situation?" But the reality is you always know your skill set better than anyone else. Which means it's sort of painfully familiar, isn't it? You think, "Oh, I always do this, or I always do that." But other people don't see you like that. They say, "Oh, he does that thing and that thing." And so actually, even if you feel a bit nervous about going into a collaborative process with someone that you think is totally outside of what you do, that might be the thing that they love about it.
Matt Moseley:
One of the things that we talk about quite a lot at the UAL Awarding Body and in our qualifications is about collaboration. So, it's a requirement, particularly within the performing arts, but we encourage it loads within art and design, in the visual arts and media, about working collaboratively. And obviously you are someone who's worked collaboratively for a really long time now with often the same group of people. And so I wanted to understand a little bit about what the dynamic of that is like, and how do you manage those relationships? Do they need management or does it just kind of happen?
Jesse Quin:
I think really, you're talking about ego, aren't you? And it's always a battle, isn't it? But I think if everyone can kind of agree to let go of it and relax about the fact that it's not going to be... Whatever you do with someone else isn't going to be wholly your vision, it's going to be the sum of the parts. If you can sort of, maybe even verbally agree that, then it takes all the pressure off. I always think about that old expression about the... It's like, a camel is a horse by committee. You get a bunch of people together to design a horse and it ends up looking like a camel.
Jesse Quin:
If you're like, "Yeah, well, camels are cool. Don't worry about the horse," then it's great and it's really rewarding. Whereas, if you spend the whole time fixating on, "Well, I wanted us to make a horse," then you forget how cool the camel is. And I think with collaboration, and especially long term with a group of people, if you get fixated on wanting to have your way and your input, it is totally unrewarding and completely kind of... It becomes full of conflict and frustration. Whereas, if you say, right, these people, we'll just get together and we'll see what happens, that's where you're going to come up with your best work.
Matt Moseley:
So I think that really kind of naturally takes us into the next section of the podcast, which is the Inspire section.
Speaker 2:
Inspire.
Speaker 3:
Inspire.
Speaker 4:
Inspire.
Speaker 5:
Inspire.
Matt Moseley:
I want to ask you, Jesse, a little bit about your process, in terms of how you develop new music. Because I'm sort of aware what I imagine as being part of a successful band like Keane and having a large audience base who are anticipating and expecting a new album with excitement. How do you feed that expectation and offer something new? Or do you feel a pressure as well to maintain some familiarity in the work that you do together? How do those ideas start to come around?
Jesse Quin:
I learned a really good lesson in 2007 or '08 when we did a couple of weeks with this producer called Jon Brion. He's a kind of master musician. Every Friday night, he does this... I don't know if he's still doing it. He does a gig in LA where he lives, where it's completely improvised. And he plays all the instruments and he'll just take requests. And someone will say, "Play Pet Sounds," and he's like, "All right," and he'll just play it. He's like an absolute genius. And he said to Keane, when we worked with him, his motto was extremify, extremify, extremify.
Jesse Quin:
And his rationale is, like we were saying before, you're a collection of influences. Whatever you do is only the output of all of these things that you've brought into your brain that you like. And you can go as far in one direction as you think is... You might do something and you think, this is completely unlike anything we've ever done. But because of your skill set and your influences, there's a pretty strong possibility people will still recognise it as you.
Matt Moseley:
Right. Yeah. Because there's an imprint which is recognisable.
Jesse Quin:
I think that's definitely the case for Keane. Even the songs that we try and do where we sort of feel like we've gone down a rabbit hole, it's still got that same voice that Tom... Tom's voice has changed a lot over the years. His voice is a lot richer and deeper now than it was on the first album, but it's still recognisable. And Tim's way of crafting a melody and the chord structures and stuff, it's all stuff that's kind of genetic. It's so deeply woven in that even if you made the track out of someone moving a pair of scissors in and out and someone else hitting a dust bin, you'd kind of know. Hockney's a great example of that. He does a bunch of different stuff and you always know it's him.
Matt Moseley:
This is it. Yeah. He's a master of reinvention, isn't he? But there's an identifiable style, isn't there, which creates a thread through that?
Jesse Quin:
But that thread is everything that he's ever learned, isn't it?
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. And so that would be you and your respective musical journeys and those things influencing what you are doing in the studio now.
Jesse Quin:
I think so.
Matt Moseley:
And so, with that, when do you know something's good?
Jesse Quin:
You don't, really. Because what is good? If you make 10 songs and you release them, there's a big chance that one person's going to hate the song that everyone else likes and love another song. I sort of think of it more in terms of quality control. Do you know what I mean? Have we done the best that we can do with this? Is that enough? And then off it goes.
Matt Moseley:
So is the priority to put something out that you want to stand by musically in terms of your own musical integrity, as it were, rather than to necessarily please the fan base? Does it start with something that you feel proud and invested in?
Jesse Quin:
I think it's really nice to recognise some of the sort of human elements of what makes something connect with people. So one of the things that we've realised with Keane is that the people that really love Keane, the thing that they love is the emotional side of the songwriting. And the last album we did is basically about sort of brutal divorce and it was quite depressing. But it's so openly vulnerable that those people just love that. So whether or not we pick up a drum machine from the '80s or a musical saw is kind of irrelevant.
Jesse Quin:
However we create the actual music, as long as we recognise that kind of core thing of people engaging with the emotional side and the storytelling side of it, then I think all is well. But if you start saying, like with Keane, there was always this thing, like, "Oh, they don't have guitars," and blah, blah, blah. If you engage with that, you're sort of instantly shackling yourself to this crap side of creativity that's really unpleasant and completely governed by other people rather than you. So I think as long as you can separate those things out in your head then it's all good.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. And I think one of the big struggles I certainly find as a creative and I think lots of people do is to know when something's finished. So how do you collectively decide an album's ready or a song is written?
Jesse Quin:
I think everyone with Keane, we always have kind of to-do and to-try lists. So there's always the kind of fundamental stuff like "This song's going to have live drums on it." Everyone's like, yeah, it's got to have live drums. Or "This song's going to have a string section," or whatever. And so you have your kind of to-do list. And then everyone also has a bunch of stuff that they're like, "Oh, maybe we should try," I don't know, a guitar going through a phaser pedal or something in the middle eight or whatever. And once you've got through all of that huge list, then you sit back and say, "Well, how does it feel?"
Matt Moseley:
One of the struggles that students often have is coming up with an initial idea. Say, they're given a project or a theme or a problem, creative problem, to solve, and finding a way in proves a massive obstacle for them. Are there any techniques or methods that you use that you go to just to grab some ideas and start galvanising things into a process?
Jesse Quin:
I think if you start to put a load of pressure on yourself to magically come up with something, you're just going to stress yourself out and you probably... Maybe you will come up with something great in that mindset but I think, like you say, kind of dipping your toe in is fine. If someone says, "Right, you need to come up with a collection of photographs that concentrate on a certain area of being a human," or whatever, it can be so vague that you can get complete option paralysis about where, like you say, where you should even begin. And maybe if you trust your instincts, you probably have a little idea that jumps out straight away that you think, oh no, maybe someone else will do that, or it's not good enough or whatever.
Jesse Quin:
So my thing is, whatever that tiny voice is, just explore it a bit without any pressure. You don't have to end up doing that. But if you even Google whatever that thing is, to explore Google images of it, or do some sketches or do anything. You don't have to commit to anything at the beginning of a project. It's like if you are recording music, you don't have to go straight into a million dollar studio and create an amazing final version.
Jesse Quin:
You can get a Dictaphone or your iPhone out and a muck around to your heart's content before you have to commit. So I think this is a classic pitfall of being creative is feeling like everything that you do has to be instantly something that you'd show to people. And you know what it's like. History shows us that loads of the people that we admire in the arts have got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tapes of demos and scrapbooks full of sketches and stuff.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. Unreleased material.
Jesse Quin:
Yeah. So just don't worry about whether it's great, just get on with something.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. I've been reading recently about musicians in various different spaces, talking about ideas, concepts like the creative faucet where they just, they're turning on a tap. So they just begin with practical activity, knowing that some of that initial activity will result in unsatisfactory outcomes, but the action of playing will introduce them to ideas. And I know that you've mentioned about practice and about the importance of practice and noodling and being around the equipment. Is that something that you still subscribe to? Do you still find the ideas come from just playing?
Jesse Quin:
I feel like for me, I have really sort of a short attention span where things are concerned in terms of instruments. So what I've learned about myself is that whatever I'm interested in at that moment, I need to grab it with both hands, because I won't be interested in it in two weeks. So if I get interested in pedal steel guitar, I'll just play it relentlessly until I'm not interested in it anymore. And then I know that I will kind of put enough in the bank that I can come back to it and be it.
Matt Moseley:
Do those interests come back around?
Jesse Quin:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Matt Moseley:
Do you ever find making music not fun?
Jesse Quin:
I feel like the things that you are really passionate about in life quite often are the things that make you the most unhappy. Do you know what I mean?
Matt Moseley:
Yeah, yeah.
Jesse Quin:
Because you're passionate about it. You care that it goes well and you care that it turns out right. And with music, there's so often I'll just be like, I can't listen to this, or I'm so frustrated with how it's turned out. But there's something that sort of drives you to keep doing it. Do you know what I mean? I know lots of painters that are the same. They'll get so frustrated with their output but they'll still pick up the paintbrush every single day.
Matt Moseley:
So you, post-school, you worked as a roadie and stuff. Didn't you work doing sort of sound installation stuff for bands? How beneficial was it for you as a young musician to start immersing yourself in the industry at that time?
Jesse Quin:
That is my number one piece of advice to anyone that's just left school and wants to go into a specific field. Just do anything that relates to that field. So if I wanted to be a musician, going and working at... I worked behind the bar at the Jazz Cafe in Camden for a while. I met loads of musicians and met loads of interesting sound engineers from all over the place. It was close enough that I was going in the right direction. And they always say, it's not what you know, it's who you know, and I think that doing that really is so much more likely to pay off than just kind of beavering away in your bedroom, working on... So that's always been my thing. It's just like, do something that relates to what I want to do, even if it's not the exact thing.
Matt Moseley:
And so how did you carve those sorts of opportunities out for yourself? Obviously, the Jazz Cafe was a job application, but did you go and actively look for opportunities or did they just present themselves and you just were open to anything? Or how did you go about it?
Jesse Quin:
A bit of both. I think I was probably much more proactive about looking for specific opportunities. If you're like, right, I want to find a band, go and look in the adverts on the side of the guitar shop or whatever. Whereas, the more general stuff tends to be serendipity or whatever. I remember going to... I was skint and I had this guitar amp and I had two guitar amps so I was like, "Right, I'll just sell one." So I went and tried to sell it to this guy that owned this company that hired out amps. And he made me a terrible offer on it. And I was like, "Oh no, don't worry about it. You haven't got any work going, have you?" And he's like, "I do." So I went and worked for him and actually going, trying to sell the amp to him and failing inadvertently is how I ended up playing with Keane, because it came through that job.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. So before we finish, as well, I wanted to talk to you a little bit, because I know that you're a big advocate for kids having access to music. And I know that you've talked through some of your work with the BBC and other media organisations about the sort of disconnect between, in this country, how we adore our musical heritage and our music industry, but you've mentioned some feelings about how that's unsupported, in schools and with young people. So I wondered if you could just talk to me a little bit about that.
Jesse Quin:
I think my bugbear with the education system where the arts are concerned is that we live in a country that's obsessed with innovation. We are obsessed with it. We want to be the most innovative country there is. We want to come up with all the new technology. But innovation and creativity, they're just completely the same thing. They're hand in hand, at least. If you want an innovative workforce, or whatever, and you're the people with the purse strings, you need to be encouraging children to use their creative brain and think laterally, because so often, a great invention will come from looking at something upside down or whatever. And having a creative mind, or a sort of agile mind that can do that is amazing. So I always just can't understand why the arts isn't taken more seriously and better-funded because it's also, there's an amazing mental health side to it.
Jesse Quin:
Kids, when they're being creative, some of the first things they do, is make stuff. They want to make a sandcastle, they want to draw a picture, they're obsessed with creating when they're small. And it kind of gets taken away from them. And I went around our local high school the other day and chatted to one of the art teachers and looked at the art department a lot. I have to say, she was quite gracious about the situation, but it was also slightly heartbreaking that the pre-GCSE kids get one art lesson every two weeks. Shit is nuts.
Matt Moseley:
How would you like to see art supported in education?
Jesse Quin:
I don't know.
Matt Moseley:
It's a tricky question, yeah.
Jesse Quin:
I don't know what the answer is to it, but I feel like there's... For me at school, it wasn't the stuff... If you said, "What have you remembered that you learned at school?" it probably wouldn't be anything that I put in an exam answer. The things that have stuck with me were from a particularly interesting lesson or a particularly great teacher. And I think so often those lessons and those teachers, they impart that knowledge in a way that has a storytelling element and feels creative and they have that kind of way of looking at things in a different way than just "Let's collect as many facts as we can, and then put them on paper." I don't feel like that's the future for humanity where education's concerned.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah, absolutely. And as well, it's arguable, isn't it, that a lot of the arts in this country is supported by the middle classes, isn't it? Do you think that there's a risk of a widening gap of accessibility with disadvantaged children?
Jesse Quin:
I think it's the other way around, actually. I think it's become such a sort of talking point and a focal point. And if you look at Arts Council funding now, so much of the focus is on people who might not have the same opportunities as someone else. So I think in some ways, it's quite easy to be doom and gloom about that stuff, but we are actually going in, I think, in the right direction. But where public schooling is concerned, it feels like we're not. I've always loved that Picasso quote about, "I believe in inspiration, but it has to find you working." This is my point, can't be just hanging around waiting for a sort thunder bolt or whatever, lightning bolt of creativity. You've got to be exercising that part of your brain, and the motor skills involved as well.
Jesse Quin:
If you want to be a painter, it's a very, very specific ability, physically. Same with instruments. So you've got to be doing that stuff regularly and I feel like it's tough in education and it's tough for teachers and kids because you kind of want to give children... You do want to give them a bit of everything. It's like if you said to me, "Well, I tell you what, we'll take history out of the curriculum to add more art lessons," I'd think you were nuts. So it is really difficult to find the right balance but I think part of what I am talking about isn't even about the time, it's about the attitude.
Matt Moseley:
What are the pressures for musicians at the moment?
Jesse Quin:
There's definitely something that's pretty broken about the music industry. I don't think I could put my finger on what it is easily, but I think... You get a lot of things like writing camps that sort of have made songs even more of a commodity than ever, and much more throw away. And as a musician, I feel really lucky that I'm in a position where our band could go and do a gig and we'd know that we'd sell a good number of tickets and we'd get paid. But we are kind of in a tiny, tiny percentage of musicians that can comfortably know that. And when you add in Spotify and everything, I don't earn any money from music outside of live performance. In terms of royalties, and PPL, it's not a wage. We're talking about a band that are really established.
Matt Moseley:
That's bizarre, isn't it?
Jesse Quin:
So you've got that thing where you've got lots of different revenue streams and stuff, but it's music specifically. I can't talk about art generally, but with music, I feel like the business side of it... I'm not saying that we should live like the old days where there were kind of rock stars, everyone was going around in limos, because it's utterly ugly and preposterous. But I think that if someone's talented and wants to pursue a career in music and people like what they do, there should be a working model that doesn't just function according to how good your PR team is.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. And is there anything that you think a young, new performer, songwriter, can do to get themselves noticed in that kind of sea of people all trying to achieve the same thing? Is it about playing live as much as you can and building a fan base that way? Or are there any...
Jesse Quin:
I think live is still amazingly important, but I get really, really bummed out by how people choose to try and promote themselves these days, over just working hard and their music being good. I took my kids bowling the other day and all the... There was just music video after music video, and all of the ones with the girls singing were incredibly sexual and all the ones with the guys singing were all about money and stuff. And it was like, is this where we're at? Still. It's heartbreaking. And you know, just be good.
Matt Moseley:
Well, it's interesting that you said that, because I wanted to ask you a question about... Obviously we live in a world of algorithms, which are feeding us, essentially, an echo chamber a lot of the time of the same thing. And so your Spotify recommendations or your Apple Music feed or whatever will start kind of shoving the same thing at you all the time. And so you might feel like you're experiencing new music, but it's within this very small sphere. So what I was going to ask you is do you have any tips or ideas about how people can broaden their listening? How do you break out of that?
Jesse Quin:
I think there's a lot of grey areas with algorithms and Spotify and all these different things. When I was a teenager, you got into new music by either listening to a radio show that you liked or by a friend saying, "Hey, borrow this CD," or "I made you a compilation tape." And that was awesome. But also there's a sort of echo chamber element to that because you just end up only listening to... When I was a teenager, it was Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and like... So one of the things I absolutely love about Spotify is that it does keep suggesting stuff to me that I've never heard before that's based on all of the stuff that I do like. So I think that's cool. I just think they need to pay people.
Matt Moseley:
Right. Yeah, yeah.
Jesse Quin:
I don't know really. You just have to decide for yourself whether you want to experience lots of new music or not.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah, true, true.
Jesse Quin:
I think if you're serious about your art and your craft, then you've got to listen to a lot of different stuff.
Matt Moseley:
Yeah. I just used to do the terrifying run down to Redeye Records and go upstairs to the... They had a UK hip hop area up there. I used to go and buy The Source or Hip Hop Connection from up there. And it was like the most terrifying moment. It was the most exhilarating and terrifying moment of my month was just going in there as a small private school kid, and just going, "I'd like to buy, do you have The Source, please?"
Jesse Quin:
"I'm predominantly interested in Rawkus Records."
Matt Moseley:
But it was so exciting. I just loved it. And I also just felt like it was a major triumph every time I'd kind of gone in and got it. And that's how I used to get my music.
Jesse Quin:
You've seen in the Old Jet office, there's a huge load of shelves full of vinyl. And loads of that vinyl, I've got records at home that are ones that I've chosen individually, but all of the stuff in the office is stuff that we've bought at auction. So half of it, we don't know what it is. And we play this game where one of us will point our finger and wave it around and someone else will shout "stop," and we'll put on whatever record it is. And it'll be like Waylon Jennings Greatest Hits.
Matt Moseley:
Oh, I love Waylon.
Jesse Quin:
And then straight into Ice-T. You know what I mean? And I feel like, it's quite a sort of playful way of doing it, but like...
Matt Moseley:
Take a punt on it.
Jesse Quin:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Matt Moseley:
Well that is brilliant. Thank you ever so much. That's great. We'll just move on to the Create section.
Speaker 2:
Create.
Speaker 3:
Create.
Speaker 4:
Create.
Speaker 5:
Create.
Matt Moseley:
So Jesse, we're asking all of our guests on the podcast to offer up what we're calling a provocation to our students who are at the start of hopefully what will be exciting and fulfilling and enriching creative careers. So given this opportunity to have the ear of young people, is there a challenge or a provocation or a question that you would encourage them to be asking themselves at this point?
Jesse Quin:
I was thinking about this a bit earlier, and after what we were talking about before, about how you start a project and things and that kind of pressure to make something really good. And I think one of the things that I think is really, really, really useful for create... Well for loads of stuff, but especially for people who are doing something creative, is to do the odd day where it is 100% quantity over quality. So you spend a day and you've set yourself a challenge. So one of the things that I've done a bunch of times with a few different friends is this thing called the 20 song game. And the entire focus is trying to write and record and demo 20 songs in a day on your own. So you start like half seven in the morning, you finish at half seven at the night.
Jesse Quin:
There's loads of parameters, like you can't work on something for more an hour, you can't listen to it more than once without adding something or finishing it. And anything goes. You can just be talking over the sound of a dog barking, or you can be barking if you want. It doesn't matter. It's just whatever you feel like. And what's amazing about it is you get to the point where you are completely out of ideas, but it's only 2:00 in the afternoon. And that moment is when your kind of true creative self starts to come out, because you can only do... You're kind of over that first part of the day where you're like, "Rah, I'm doing loads of stuff, but I'm sure some of it's going to be total genius."
Jesse Quin:
And you get to the point where you're like, "Well, I don't care know about that. I just want to get to the end of day and have a beer and a pizza," or whatever. And with the 20 song game, you listen to it together at the end. And you get to the end of it, and you look back on it, you sort of see this little person. You're like, that is who I am. That's my true artistic self. And it's all because you've completely abandoned the idea of quality.
Matt Moseley:
So you've exhausted all of those preconceptions.
Jesse Quin:
It almost doesn't make sense. But when you completely say it doesn't matter if it's rubbish. But I'm going to do as much as humanly possible in this 12 hour block you'll find that just by... Because that's what humans do, you'll start coming up with stuff that's really true and fascinating and awesome.
Matt Moseley:
That's really great. That's really interesting. Thanks, Jesse. I think that will be perfect for young musicians. And the same can be true with any creative process with that, can't you? Make 20 paintings in a day. See what happens.
Matt Moseley:
Thank you for listening to this week's Teach Inspire Create podcast with Jesse Quin. I hope you've been able to take some valuable information from this episode and apply it in one way or another to your creative practice. Join us next week when I'll be talking to Karina H Maynard, a specialist in representation for the arts and culture. I'll be talking to Karina about the importance of decolonising the curriculum, as well as her passion for music and the different influences that have shaped her career. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to, please do share your responses and feedback on social media, using the hashtag #ticpodcast. See you next time. Bye.