List of demands

What's interesting about the way the departure of Radio 1 playlist clerk Alex Jones-Donnelly is being reported is that he's being marked down as our greatest spotter of new talent. Er, come again? For a good few years after his 2000 promotion to the position he was criticised for playlisting far too much derivative dance music, then when guitar music started landing back in his lap after 2001 the only way a band would gain consideration was if they were able to supply a good hundredweight of clippings. The list of bands he seems to have personally helped there, for instance - Coldplay (not touched until their fourth single), The Streets (eventually gave in and C-listed Has It Come To This after Lamacq played it and played it and played it for ages), Franz Ferdinand (A-listed Take Me Out but needed a massive bandwagon of Tips For 2004 notices after missing Darts Of Pleasure), Dizzee Rascal (missed I Luv U when it was being hammered in the clubs he was supposed to be watching) and Joss Stone (subject of a massive major label push). To take a fairly random example, after Maximo Park went top 20 Graffiti was almost grudgingly given up to five plays a week on this new sub-C list for 'new bands' which almost never is for new bands and it's only now that they're getting serious Radio 1 attention. Almost every genre now has its complaints with the station's music policy - pop feels it's being overlooked (yeah, because that has no other outlets, does it?), dance seems to be being given payback for its ubiquity not so long ago, R&B has apparently been shrunk down to a handful of Usheralikes and TLC followers, new rappers have to work just as hard as new guitar bands... even James Blunt didn't get playlisted until You're Beautiful had made it into the top five, which Jones-Donnelly's new employers might want to ask him about.