Not wild about this call to campaigners

The Devil may have all the best tunes, but I’m not sure that A Distant Call qualifies under the heading of “best”. This is the track with accompanying wildlife illustrations to be released on 12 August, opening day of the grouse shooting season, by indie band The Artisans.

All or any cash raised by the track will go to Wild Justice, the anti-just about anything to do with shooting, campaign co-founded by Chris Packham, the wildlife broadcaster.

Releasing A Distant Call on 12 August pretty well guarantees it plenty of coverage. There is, after all, not much to say these days about the opening of the grouse season, apart from the usual.

The 12th is a hardy annual in news bulletins at a time of year when, with the exception of the dreaded B-word, there is not much news about. Normally we can expect stock shots of a keeper striding through heather with gun and dogs plus a few bangs and sound bytes about beneficial moorland management countered by the RSPB or even Chris Packham being cross about it all.

This year newsrooms and magazine programmes on TV and radio will for a change be able to at least report on, if not play, the track and brighten up a subject which is of doubtful interest to 90 per cent of the population. Whether of course the licence payer-funded BBC in its many TV and audio guises would or should swell the coffers of Wild Justice for the privilege of using the sound track is another matter, unless of course they are handed the material, free of charge.

Even then it will have to balance A Distant Call’s message with something sensible, if worthy, from the shooting lobby in the absence of a rousing counter chorus from a choir of Scottish gamekeepers.

Still, the BBC is not what many people watch or listen to these days. And those that want to hear

A Distant Call describing grouse moors as “a rich man’s playground” (would they be so upset if grouse moors were a poor man’s playground?) will already be in the Packham camp and happy to swell the coffers of Wild Justice. But then who knows?

A Distant Call may turn out to be a hit which, sweet as the Artisans may be (they list guinea pigs, bidding on ebay and orange juice among their likes) they would surely be deeply miffed if billions ended up in the Wild Justice bank account and not their own.

If you really want to hear – if you can, over the jangly bits – just how subversive, or rather ordinary, the song is, you can hear it free before the official release, on soundcloud.com/ thefabulousartisans. Listen out for the hunting horn at the beginning. n