REVOLVER:TIME FOR the Mercury to gather up its rag-bag of confused and incoherent musical belongings and slink off into the night, slow hand-clapped on its way by anyone who thinks that a bit of thoughtfulness and transparency should be basic prerequisites for a major music award. The Mercury may still clog up the broadsheets for a full week, continue to spawn a slew of "a local award for local people" imitators and provoke frantic bouts of hand-wringing among our equanimous friends the music bloggers, but it's time for someone to shout stop.

It's get radical or get redundant time for the Mercury. The award now desperately needs to reposition itself away from its current pathetic groove: that of an NMEtribute award, with a few ridiculously obscure acts thrown in so they can jump up and down screaming, "Look at us, we're so not mainstream!"

Now that The Villagers have got their torches lit and are marching towards the Mercury castle, there are a few measures that may save it from its descent into a farce that makes the Brits and the Meteors look like a Nobel Prize ceremony. Its US imitator, the Shortlist Music Prize (which shut up shop in 2007, perhaps due to its appalling selection of winners and general disinterest) used to have the stipulation that only albums that had sold less than 500,000 copies would be eligible. In that way, it was able to execute its mission of bringing valuable but ignored work to a wider audience.

Proportion those figures down for British and Irish albums (here the figure would be around 15 copies) and instantly the Mercury would be recast as an award that could “break” new acts rather than mindlessly following the demented slaverings of the indie music press.

The other radical measure would be to confine it to albums that are self-released. Pure, organic, home-spun music that hasn’t been touched in an inappropriate place by the lascivious hands of either the indies or the majors. Granted, you might end up with a shortlist of Hebredean throat music and Donegal death metal – but that couldn’t be any worse than some of the execrable rubbish the Mercury has foisted on us over the years.

A more simple idea is to abolish the need for bands to submit their album for consideration –

ie hand over a cheque for £200 (€237) – to the Mercury. Let’s face it, some good bands out there would rather spend £200 on lager and cocaine than pay for their music to be judged by people who, on this year’s reckoning, wouldn’t know their Ash from their Elbow.

Hence, one imagines, the non-appearance of Gorillaz on this year’s list. They withdrew their debut album from the Mercury shortlist in 2001, and we can only assume that they deliberately disqualified themselves on ideological grounds by not submitting Plastic Beach.

When, at last Tuesday’s unveiling ceremony, the chair of the judges Simon Frith announced that “this year’s Mercury list includes musicians from all stages of their careers and from contrasting parts of the British Isles”, you had to shake your head and wonder if you can really respect an award when the overall head uses such an antiquated term as “British Isles” to describe the UK and Ireland.

He also, perhaps inadvertently, shone some light on the demographic-pleasing nature of the Mercury shortlist. Music isn’t some big, hand-made quilt with parts included from all races, age-groups and national regions. We don’t need a shortlist which is geographically and ethnically representative.

We need the 12 best British and Irish albums of the year. And if they happen to be, on any given year, all black grime albums from

a Wandsworth estate – so be it. Ditto if it’s 12 whey-faced Irish troubadours singing about their feelings. Simon Frith also said of this year’s shortlist: “There is music here to make you laugh, cry, dance and sing.” One out of four ain’t bad, Simon.

For an alternative Mercury Music Prize shortlist, go to thequietus.com. For details of the rival £20 Music Prize, go to popjustice.com