For some weird reason that I can’t quite put my finger on, I am not getting stressed out about the fact that my work plan is going slightly wrong. I am still hopeful that I can get the audio book finished before Sunday, a week behind schedule, and the short film writing is proving to be an uphill struggle. Of course this week is a podcast week too so I have that to worry about, especially after last time when I left it until Sunday only for the upload to take ages. I want to record it and upload it in plenty of time to allow for error so will probably do it on Friday. Again, I don’t understand why I am not worrying about having too much work. It’s better than not having work I suppose, and whenever things start to build up and stress me out I just remember living in a marital prison and not being able to even have a career.

Without the responsibilities of NottinghamLIVE and The Sound of Nottingham UK these days, my influence on the Nottingham music scene should by now have diminished slightly. However I have managed to keep my hand in and retain a good relationship with a large section of the city’s music makers. The comments I made in the newsletter about my resignation from the American show, along with various blogs, have been met with a positive reaction. At Waterfront for example, a few people told me they agreed, although a few of them are unable to say anything publicly due to their connections to certain promoters and labels. Although I think it is a shame that I can’t name names and thank them, I do understand and respect their need to keep things hushed. One thing I will say though is that it is a real fucking shame that this is the situation they find themselves in.

I had conversations with two musician friends on Facebook last night on this theme. The first, let’s call him Clark, actually got in touch on another matter but complimented me on the blog and said that he looks forward to each new one appearing, and even compared me favourably to Johnny Cigarettes, and if you don’t know that name you aren’t as cool as you thought you were. Clark reiterated what he has told me before about the importance of writing with honesty, something I have always done.

The second conversation, let’s call him Terry, messaged to say that he had read my blog about Waterfront (rather than the fluffy 400 words I wrote for the paper) and agreed with what I said about the acoustic stage being too repetitive, and that the lineup was very ‘safe’ this year compared to previous festivals. This led to a conversation regarding how much of a struggle he has had both as a solo performer and with his band. We are both a little concerned about the scene stagnating and Terry asked what I would do to prevent this from happening. It’s quite a question not to mention a huge task, but within a few minutes I had come up with a few pointers that could make part of a rescue plan.

First of all I would come up with some way to allow other promoters to get a look in. perhaps a friendly code of conduct that politely says that promoters are only allowed to stage events in certain venues. I have seen it done and it works, although the promoters would not be able to claim any exclusive rights over a particular act for it to work in Nottingham. A monopoly isn’t healthy in the long run.

‘Venue’ is in this sense an umbrella term covering anywhere that live music can be performed.

‘Act’ in this sense refers to either an individual singer or a full blown band, and anything in between.

I can’t comment on the rest of the country, but Nottingham’s propensity to stage free gigs has made it so that people might be reluctant to pay to see someone if there’s a chance of seeing them for free later in the next week or so. In my promoter days (not in Nottingham I add) I would charge admission based on one pound per act plus 50p for me. Four acts therefore cost four pound fifty to see. The acts earned a pound per audience member, as I had the cost of the room and various other overheads I very rarely made a profit but that isn’t the point. This put the onus on all parties, me included, to make the effort to properly promote the gig and get people through the door. This was in the days before social media (in fact it was before widespread Internet use) so a lot more leg work was needed; fliers, posters, mailing lists and street teams were the bygone equivalent of Facebook, Twitter, and even dear old MySpace. If a lot of people turned up then there was more money to share out, hardly rocket science. Also, and this relates to an issue I have mentioned before, I didn’t share the money out until the gig had finished. Because they had to stick around for their cash, I avoided the problem of bands taking their crowd away with them when they left as soon as they had finished.

The final idea might be seen as a little destructive but again it is an idea that is in place in many other areas and once people got used to it then it would become a way of life. Booked acts were always asked to agree to not play another gig elsewhere for an agreed window of time, this is traditionally one week either side. For example, if I had a gig on Saturday 26^th July then between the 19th of July and 2nd of August I would agree not to play within a certain boundary. The advantage is that some level of anticipation is allowed to build up and that in turn encourages people to pay on the door. At the moment it is possible to see someone playing for free and some people play several times in the same week, or indeed the same night.

Some of you might agree. Some of you won’t. That’s the beauty of opinions, so play nice.

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