It annoyed me that I didn't get up until late, as I had a busy day ahead of me. Once again I found myself working on a Saturday, which for a self-employed person is reasonably pointless as I don't get paid time-and-a-half for it, I do it because I enjoy what I do. It isn't about the money, although it does help you to eat and stuff so please find my Bandcamp page in the side links to this blog. Alternatively, above this blog is my PayPal 'donate' button; go mad!
I was in my office all day recording the latest exciting installment of
Moonage Daydream. This edition is all about
The 1980 Floor Show, which took place in 1973. This edition was finished (the writing part) on Thursday and I've been looking forward to getting it recorded and uploaded. I am very pleased with the series so far, and although I don't get too many listeners on Mixcloud, it is getting good figures on the Internet archive; swings and roundabouts. Due to the research and writing process,
Moonage Daydream takes a long time to make, and the pressure of having to do this on a weekly basis would probably kill me. The trouble is that I'm leaving very long intervals between each edition, which can't really be helped unless I forget everything else and concentrate on just producing this series. As I do
Moonage Daydream for myself out of love, I obviously can't afford to do that. There's also the matter of all my other projects, so I do get a little sense of relief when I have uploaded an edition, as I know I can forget about it and de-Bowie my brain for a little bit, (although nobody should ever totally de-Bowie their brains of course). To counter this problem, I will be putting out short filler podcasts that will be of interest to Bowie fans, but won't have anything to do with the continuity of the main series.
Acting impulsively, I started one of those jobs that you immediately regret starting; I decided to tidy my office. After I'd done some of the boring stuff like fill the recycling bag up with assorted scraps of paper, old newspapers, pop bottles, and other assorted office debris, I then tidied all the boxes of Christmas decorations in the corner. As we 'top up' every year, the collection is taking up more and more room.
My favourite discovery was a collection of boxes all containing demo and promo CDs that I had amassed over the years. The over-cautious part of my brain is scared to part with these on the off chance that one of them will become mega-stars and I will have a rare piece of treasure worth literally dozens of pounds. All the stuff from my promoter days is boxed up in storage, so these shoe boxes full of CDs are from when I first started writing for
Night Flight and then presenting on Sherwood Radio. This was the last gasp for the era of demo discs in the post, as nowadays the majority of music that I get sent I receive through emailed MP3 files. It's quite a fast progression really, as I had got used to the postman bring packets to my door containing cassettes for my consideration. The first time someone sent me a CD I immediately thought the sender a flashy show-off, of course this was when CD production wasn't the simple, do-it-at-home task that it is today. The compact disc gradually became the thing, until eventually the thought of sending someone a cassette suddenly seemed weird and outdated. These days of course you can buy as many blank discs as you can carry out of the pound shop, and the CD writer on most computers means that everyone can be their own record label boss. However, some time in the early 2000s, (one of those strange happenings that nobody can stick an exact date on - a bit like when women's pubic hair became extinct) I received an email that asked me to click on a link to their Myspace page to listen to their music. I didn't even know what Myspace was, and this was in the days when nobody dared to click on a link in an email because we thought our computers would crash and our house would burn down. So the lifespan of the mailed CD was only a few years compared to cassettes before them, and links to pages and attached MP3 files after them. That was one of the things that stood out from the collection in my office; how so many bands and singers didn't have a 'proper' website, but had a Myspace site. It's hard to believe that Myspace has gone to the great Internet dustbin along with Geocities, Compuserve, Hotmail, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Popbitch, and so many other names that you are reading in this blog and saying "oh yes, I remember that" to yourself, and the likes of Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Reverbnation, and others now exist in its place to help provide a service to musicians.
A lot of the names on the CDs have no meaning now, so I would be interested to find out what became of them. There are some names that have gone on to good things, (I'm especially proud that Jake Morley and Calling All Astronauts were heard on my show first), and a lot of Nottingham music that I will definitely keep. Actually, the Nottingham collection is now in one box of treasure that I might add to my archive that gets left in my will to the library. One of my favourite bands, the criminally not yet world famous Captain Dangerous, feature quite heavily. They used to be represented by Manila PR, who I've had a good working relationship with for a number of years, and they sent me their singles. Funnily enough, Manila PR themselves have made the move towards sending emails these days. I tweeted that I have so many Captain Dangerous promos, and was tweeted back from their account, (which I think is Adam but might be Miles, I have never thought to ask) asking how I had got hold of them.
This has given me an idea for a podcast series, (because I don't have enough to do already), playing these CDs to refresh the memory of music lovers. As preparation I would take notes from their dormant Myspace sites, (or at least I would if I was able to, as looking at Myspace is impossible nowadays on Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome can fuck the fuck off in my opinion), and the single sheet press releases that I have a box full of. The idea originally came to me a while ago when John Peel's record collection became public property. I imagine that the best way to do this would be to try and index the discs first, to see how many different CDs from the same artists I have, as they will make longer and possibly more interesting editions. The people that only sent one song might not even be worth doing really. Now all I need to think of is a name.
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