I like singers and musicians;
they are (mostly) easy going and keen to get exposure. Exposure helps a band to
make people aware of their music, which I would imagine to be a prime reason to
make music. You can write songs and keep them in a drawer if that’s what you
want to do, but most people who work in the creative ‘sector’ want their work
to be recognised. If you wrote a play that you thought was worth staging, then
it doesn’t matter whether it gets staged in a makeshift space in a room above a
pub or at The Old Vic, because there’s the satisfaction of your work being
seen. Maybe if you persist in the upstairs-in-a-pub stages, then one day you
may realise your dream of your play being staged at The Old Vic, or if you’re
really lucky it might be staged all over the world and be made into a film.
That didn’t happen when I wrote a play, but I was happy to see paying customers
coming in to witness the words and actions that had come from my own pen.
Photographers like to have their photographs enjoyed, whether it is an
exhibition of their photography or a ‘like’ on Instagram, it depends on the
extent of your ambition as to how far you take it. I am at a point in my career
where I am standing in a strange position. I imagine myself on a fence between
two gardens; the garden of success and the garden of failure. Being ‘famous’
was never one of my aims as that always seemed to be vacuous existence in which
you could be king of the world one minute and nothing the next. All I wanted
was to be creative; the problem (if it can be considered a problem) is that I
have always done what I have done creatively for myself, if anyone else enjoys
it that is a bonus. Ever since childhood I have wanted to have my own radio
show. I used to set up two tape recorders in my bedroom, one with a blank tape
that was recording, and the other containing music. I spent hours in my bedroom
creating radio shows, and taught myself how to do chart rundowns using the top
twenty cut from the newspaper on a Monday. I also taught myself the art of
talking over an introduction to a song right up to the point when the vocals
kicked in, a practice that I despise on radio these days funnily enough as I
find it disrespectful to the musician. Although I had a good voice for radio,
(in my head at least – I wish I had at least one of those cassettes now to see
how I sounded, it can’t have been as bad as my first show on Sherwood Radio), I
had no clue about the technicalities of it. One day when I was a child, I saw a
feature about Radio One on television and was amazed at all the things they had
to do at the same time as talking, cueing up records on the turntables, putting
jingle cartridges in at the right moment, it all seemed a bit complicated.
However, I never gave up on my ambition of a radio show, and now I have three.
The philosophy of doing it for
me applies to my work in radio to some extent. Obviously there’s some kind of
remit in place with NottinghamLIVE
and The Sound of Nottingham UK, but when it
comes to The Sunday Alternative I am free to play
whatever I like. Although there’s the attitude of doing it for me in place, I
am proud of how well the show is doing. Part of the success is the fact that
there is literally nowhere else you can hear the songs I choose to play.
Radio aside, everything else
that I have done is a labour of love. My podcasts are about subjects that I am
passionate about and luckily there are other people who share my interests, be
they LP records, cassette compilations, or the life and work of David Bowie. My
blog is also important to me. When I first started writing it I would be lucky
to get twenty read readers, I kept at it basically because I wanted to write
and now I get hundreds of reads a day. If nobody at all ever read my blog again
it wouldn’t stop me though.
Going back to my original
point, most creative people want to have their work appreciated by others.
Musicians are bound to want people to hear their music, which has become a far
easier thing to do in the last few years since Myspace came along and paved the
way for Soundcloud and all the other music sharing sites. Something that does
make a difference to a musician is radio play, as radio is still an important
medium as far as music is concerned. Nottingham has a lot of musicians and
obviously a huge music scene, (“the UK capital of music”) so presenting two
radio shows dedicated to Nottingham music is a great opportunity to showcase
these bands and musicians. This is where things can get frustrating.
When you ask a band to send
their music in for radio play, they gratefully send you music, (especially when
you tell them that you have a radio show in America). The same goes for
inviting them to perform live sessions. NottinghamLIVE
is quite a big deal, so it pisses me off when people pull out with stupid
excuses. It has happened to us a few times now, and on two occasions we have
been informed by managers. That fucking word, manager!
I was under the impression
that the job of a manager is to work FOR the client, doing all that you can to
promote the client (in this case a band or musician) and get them heard by as
many people as possible. It is not the job of a manager to hinder the career of
that person you are trying to promote. I find that managers are actually the
biggest pain in the arse when it comes to trying to organise things, so much so
that I always feel duty bound to inform the band/musician that their so-called
manager isn’t doing the job they are employed to do.
The worst situation is the one
where the musician is really keen to do whatever it is that you have asked them
to do, but then they ruin it by asking you to speak to their manager. I suppose
if they have a busy schedule then it stands to reason that the manager is able
to keep the diary under control, but I then find that the managers are no help
at all. When Saint Raymond appeared on NottinghamLIVE
I asked him about an American session and got the same thing, although he did
apologise for sounding like a dickhead. He seemed keen but I have had no
response from his so-called manager. You could argue that his recent record
deal is thanks in part to his appearance on NottinghamLIVE,
so it would be nice to have our part acknowledged by doing a session for the
American show. It is thanks to lackadaisical management that I had no session
this week, as I had been holding out for someone who again had expressed an
interest but had been thwarted by management not doing their job properly. I
had asked Harleighblu to come and do a session this week, as it would have been
broadcast this coming Sunday in the USA and here in the UK, the day before the
release of her album. Although the album is a work of art and will no doubt
sell by the lorry load, she has now missed out on airplay in what is quite a
big market to crack.
The moral of the story is to
talk to the monkey when possible, as organ grinders are a waste of time.
===
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I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.
I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.
