There aren’t many recording
sessions left this year for the exclusive American recordings I am doing for The Sound Of Nottingham UK, and today there was one fewer as
I had yet another cancellation due to illness. This is the problem (I suppose)
of booking everything so far in advance as you can’t account for such
problematic obstacles. The band were apologetic about it but it left me with
only a few hours to try and find a replacement so as not to waste my booking at
ROFL Audio. I didn’t want to ask the bands that I had booked for the last three
sessions of the year as that would just have left a lot of things up in the
air, so I went through my ‘want’ list of the people I had on Facebook
(occasionally good for something other than poking and throwing sheep) who were
showing the green dot and those who I had the numbers of in my phone. As the
day wore on I could see that things weren’t going according to plan, and my
mood started to change a bit. Especially as one band had said a provisional yes
pending checking ‘with the others’, before ringing me three hours later to say
they couldn’t do it. I hadn’t wanted to risk double booking so had taken a
break from asking people until he got back to me, expecting him to ring back a
lot sooner than that. This led to me getting rather pissed off at the
Nottingham music scene in general and the general can’t-be-arsed attitude
within. Of course that isn’t really true as most of the people involved are
absolute darlings, but I do have what I call my ‘C-list’ of musicians I wouldn’t
give house room to. I posted a frustrated post on Facebook (remember Facebook?)
about how bands should take precaution against illness on a Monday because
Tuesday seems to be a bad day for a musicians health. I also tweeted looking
for a band and followed it up with a tweet about how I would have said ‘no time
wasters’, but asking for no timewasters in the Nottingham music scene is like
asking for no sand on the beach. This was met with amusement by one musician,
who although supported my stance, still weren’t available at such short notice.
By the time I had given up on
having a live session in, I got involved in a slight altercation via email with
a well known live music venue in Nottingham who seem to have more and more of a
stranglehold in the city. They have displayed a ridiculous attitude towards
guest lists for a while now, which I can’t work out is wilful ignorance or
just plain old-fashioned incompetence. I took Mandi out a couple of weeks ago
to see Gary Numan but couldn’t get in because my name apparently wasn’t on the
guest list (first world problem) despite having a confirmation email from his
manager Ian. One of their latest initiatives was to stop reviewers from having
a +1 but they backed down from that. Now they want reviewers from The Nottingham Evening Post (as I
still call it) to show ID, something I don’t agree with as I don’t have a City
Card or a Citizen card and I don’t want one either. This moved me to email the
editor to say that I no longer wish to do reviews for these venues. Don’t jump
on a local music bandwagon and then be arseholes to one of its main people. While
I’m at it, it’s lovely that you have local bands acting as support for the big
names when they visit, but it would be even lovelier if you paid them.
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Episode one of Steve’s LP Box series three is here if
you like Pearl Jam.
