David Emery Online

Best in show

4 October 2007

Awards shows are a funny beast.

In all honesty, bar a very select few, they are invariably utterly rubbish. Anyone who watch the car crash that was the MTV VMAs a couple of weeks ago will surely agree. On a slight tangent – why is it that major Hollywood filmstars who earn their living from performing lines on a daily basis can’t manage to read an auto-cue when presenting an award? The frequent jokes they try to squeeze in are always so incredibly wooden…

Anyway.

Last night was the Digital Music Awards at the Camden Roundhouse. The DMAs is an awards ceremony that’s worse then most, which is quite impressive; it straddles a murky area between being an industry awards show, rewarding the workers in the digital music industry, and a public awards show, with performances by pop artists and coverage (albeit late night coverage) on Channel 4. Each aspect – the industry side versus the public side – hurts the other; because it’s an industry event the awards are fairly boring (“Best Artist Promotion” anyone?) which means they’re never going to attract performers worth seeing.

This years was no exception, featuring the likes of Natasha Bedingfield, Newton Faulkner and Mutya Buena (from the Sugerbabes). Quality entertainment it wasn’t.

Of course, in the interests of transparency I have to reveal that we were indeed nominated for an award, but unlike last year – where we won all 3 we were in for – we lost out to Enter Shikari. That totally has no affect on my opinion of the awards, though. Oh no.