In the 12 days since the 2014 Boston Music Awards nominations were announced, there been a lot of shit slinging going on across the internet. Some of it directed at us here at Vanyaland. So today, BMAs executive director released a statement regarding all this, and we’re just going to post it in full below.
Yes I am on the nominating committee with 171 others (that shouldn’t be news to anyone). Yes, we were nominated for Best Music Blog this year. Yes, we won it last year, and we think we earned it. And oh yeah, we curated the Sound Of Our Town kickoff event earlier this month at Lawn On D, because the BMAs asked us to book the bands, a nice gesture after winning a BMA last year.
To quote the late, great Tony Wilson: “So it goes.”
Here’s Rives statement in full, which we just saw via social media. More info on the nomination process can be found here.
And by the way, this year’s event goes down at the Revere Hotel on December 14. We’ll be conducting interviews from our hotel room bathtub, like we used to do in the old WFNX.com days…
Message from Owner, Executive Director of the BMAs, Chip Rives
I wanted to let everyone know that we will soon be making some changes to the website that more clearly outlines the mission, history and process of the Boston Music Awards. We are still working on the history section, which will include photos, programs, and lists of winners from the last 27 years. The Boston Music Awards is the longest running regional awards show in the country and there are boxes and boxes of great music, photos, and bad haircuts that we are plowing through to share with everyone.
We have also tried to more clearly highlight the nominating and voting process and how it works. We have a nominating committee made up of 172 members of the Boston Music community with diverse and interesting backgrounds, but all of them deeply immersed in the local music scene. We are always looking to expand the committee with qualified folks, and we have provided a link if you know people that we may have missed. We try to make this process inclusive and representative of the incredibly diverse pockets of music happening all over our City, so please let us know how we can improve it.
We have not provided the names of everyone on the committee, and we won’t. There has been a lot of conspiracy talk recently and it has resulted in some pretty harsh, direct, and public attacks on a few of the people who are currently on the committee. We are not going to subject the other 166 people on the list to that kind of abuse or solicitation from potential nominees. We are open to suggestions, recommendations, and open discussion about how to make the awards better. What we are not open to is abuse of the people who donate their time to highlight the successes of Boston musicians and raise money for community music programs. No one signed up for that.
I also want to apologize to those committee members that have been attacked. I find it amazing that the attacks have focused on 6 people who are EXACTLY the kinds of people who we should be consulting about what is going on in the Boston music scene:
Two music writers who cover Boston music and have been published in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Phoenix, Men’s Journal, Vice, Paste, Huffington Post, and countless other national publications.
A local radio personality who has a respected local music show and promotes a local event that identifies new, up and coming artists and has been promoting local music in the City for the past 20 years.
A manager who has dedicated over 20 years to managing artists, created and runs the Boston Managers Group that brings together local managers of local talent, and teaches music management at local universities.
A former music director at a local, independent radio station and former music editor of the leading local music publication who now has a popular blog focused on local music.
That’s six out of 172 on the committee. Aren’t these the types of people we want involved?
So, we are going to focus on putting together a great event on December 14th at the Revere Hotel where we will hopefully shine a spotlight on all the great music coming out of our City and raise over $60,000 for local music programs. We hope you all will join us, say hello to old friends, make some new ones, hear some great new music, and celebrate the amazing music culture that we have in Boston.