I finally bought the second Clipse album last week. It wasn't something I'd been planning on, after all it came just over a year ago and despite excellent reviews, disappeared without a trace. But after a meeting in the West End I found myself wandering into Fopp and there was a pile of Hath Hath No Fury piled high by the entrance.
Before I go on, I must just confess to something: the truth is that I am incapable of being in the vicinity of a record shop, without going in and checking what's in stock. I just can't walk past. And more often than not, I'm not going in there to find out if they have Foals or Vampire Weekend. No, I'm looking at a map of my past, a whole host of album sleeves (now in miniature, of course) that I am already very familiar with. In my Pink Flag book, there's a story about a man (he happens to be schizophrenic, but don't let that distract from the point) who takes solace from this. He points out that no other highstreet shops operate in this way - i.e where the products they sell are always housed in the same packaging from the day they first appear. Not even books, he says, insist on the same artwork from day one. I wonder whether anyone else takes comfort from the familiar in this way - ah, look, there's the four men walking over the zebra crossing, there's the baby swimming underwater, and there's the prism... If albums had to be repackaged and redesigned every six months they surely wouldn't hold the mystique that they hold for music fans like him. And me. Of course, some do undergo such reworkings, but crucially even if Unknown Pleasures or This Year's Model or, I don't know ... What's Going On do suddenly become double CDs with unreleased live recordings, full colour booklets and vinyl slipcases, they still keep the images that have always resonated; the 'classic' images...
I'm sure that so much of pop music's obsession with what is 'classic' is wrapped up in this museum-like status of the record shop. Every month there are at least three magazines devoted to the chronicling of 'classic' artists with seminal albums that stand the test of time. It sounds like I'm complaining but really I'm not - I love to read about albums I own, love to pour over alternative track-listings, outtakes, demos, stories about the songs that nearly-were or almost weren't. But the point is that the more of this stuff there is, the more it makes you feel that pop's best days are over. When even the NME starts branding 'classic' artist compilations, when Q Magazine do issues entirely devoted to 'classic' music from the decades, when bands themselves opt to do shows made of their 'classic' albums played in the authentic running order, it kind of feels like pop music is entering the arena of the archive. And the shops, always at the sharp end of any change in the market, are where it's most evident.
OK, dudes, I know I risk, like, appearing like, really really ancient? But record shops used to have an exciting Anything Might Happen atmosphere about them - you never knew what would be in stock, they would always be able to surprise you. There's a Nick Hornby anecdote (although I might be incorrectly attributing it to him) about always checking the Clash section whenever he was in a shop, long after they'd split up, just in case they'd thought to release something new, which he hadn't got. But when I walk into a branch of Zavvi, all I can smell is the dust, the piles of exhibits that no one is interested in, mounting up in corners, the indifferent curators and the unstoppable looming tsnami of cheap DVDs.
Fopp has been resurrected by HMV, bless them, and still retains a little bit of its former glory. I always used to bump into like-minded obsessives in the massive, now closed, branch of Fopp on Tottenham Court Road, whether it was my friend William (who alphabetises his CDs in separate genres - oh yes!) or Pete (a writer, who gets sent more CDs than he knows what to do with, yet still can't resist the lure of the record shop) and we would exchange sympathetic glances over teetering piles of jewel-cases as we sidled up to the check-out. But even Fopp is now really just HMV in slightly more fashionable trousers - the Top 50 albums, some catalogue, a smattering of hipsterish books...
So there I am in Fopp, getting the 'Oh God, why am I here?" sinking feeling in my stomach that I now get in all record shops (it's too late, the habit formed when I was a teenager so there's no shaking it now! ) when I see the aforementioned pile of Clipse. And do you know how much my copy was? One pound! It could have been on sale in my local Walthamstow 99P Shop. I wonder whether Malice and Pusher T anticipated this retail development when they penned opening track We Got It For Cheap. It didn't make me want it or value it any less - the album is great, by the way, particularly final track Nightmares which is like 21st century Curtis Mayfield. But ultimately, it makes the shrine, the church of pop music that so many of us have put our faith in - with its icons from Arrival to Hot Rats - feel slightly less important, slightly less essential and leaves me wondering if pop was always just a bit of fun to pass the time.
Sunday, 30 March 2008
Monday, 24 March 2008
Dads on Drugs
The band were playing in Stockton on Tees last night. I stayed in London and celebrated Easter by helping my daughter and nephew find chocolate eggs in my dad's front room. Fortunately, I had hidden most of them in the first place so got to them early, "Oh hello! Here's another one!" I would say. They would get all excited and then reward me with one of the already discovered eggs from their little bags. The mugs! I must have eaten about 50 before they realised.
I spoke to Jack from the band, after lunch, telling him where I was.
"You're such a family man, Ben, aren't you?"
And it's true. I do like a bit of family action, particularly at Easter. But part of me felt bad at not being with the guys up in Teeside, and, the day before in Carlisle. I wrote about being paternal towards them in the last blog when I was talking about booking hotels (and boy, did that ever polarise people) and there is no way around it, a manager is the band's dad. For example, I got a text yesterday from one of the guys telling me that the rider was boozeless - not in a moany, whiny way, but asking if this was some clever Machiavellian plan to force them to have a sensible night before the following night's gig when they would be appearing in front of a man who might be investing in us. If only I had thought of that! Frankly, that sort of forward planning surely only happens in novels, and besides, if a band wants to get fucked up it will manage it regardless of the quality of rider.
I'm glad this band are fairly sensible. I mean, don't get me wrong, they love a drink - the drink the sort of amount, which if drunk by me renders me a hiccuping, slurring fool who hates himself in the morning. Crucially though, they don't appear to have any really worrying vices. But would I notice? Just as Maddy managed to sneak in at least a dozen mini eggs yesterday without me noticing, the band could actually be crack-dealing under my nose and I would just think they had some weird friends. I say this based on all my years in the music business without noticing people having drink or drug problems. OK, so when I was A&Ring 60ft Dolls, even I noticed that there may have been issues when the drummer tried to shoot me in the studio with an air pistol and the bass player seemed fond of red wine for breakfast. But on the whole, I honestly didn't see anyone really losing it. And it wasn't that I was far away it - I mean, I drove Elastica to their first handful of shows! Yes, that's me at the wheel of a Transit with a seasoned heroin addict in the back introducing enthusiastic newcomers to Mr Brown - or so I'm told, at least. Me, I was wondering if we were at Membury Services yet. My first Head of A&R actually had Talcum in his nickname, but did I ever see him doing coke? In fact, did he ever offer me any? No. Bit annoyed about that, come to think of it - maybe it was just a rumour, maybe he just used a lot of baby powder after taking a bath. Then of course came the full-on Britpop years - where everyone was supposedly on coke. My main memories are of people trying and failing to buy it in the small hours - like a teenage boys trying to lose their virginity - more energy being expended on talking about it than actually doing it.
There were eventually some dark years when I worked for a indie label whose owners did a lot of drugs. But again, I had to be the organised one; I had to be the 'dad'. It was annoying really because most of them were my age or older and yet they seemed to be having all the fun while I had to be the one who was together and reliable. I remember one time where I had to pick up the singer - a very famous British TV actor - for a live TV appearance. He was also one of the owners and therefore my employer. He'd been out all night and I'd failed to get hold of him on the phone all afternoon. With about an hour to go before the show aired, I drove round to his house in Tufnell Park. Eventually, he answered the door. Naked.
"Oh hello, love - what time is it?"
"It's 5.30 - you've got this show at 7."
"Oh right," he said, totally unfazed,"Hang on a tic..."
When we got to the Whitehall Theatre, where they filmed the daily Jack Doherty show, we had 20 minutes before it started. We raced through the stage door entrance and up the back stairs to the dressing room. Without pausing to hang up his jacket, make himself at home, or even take a breath, the singer b-lined it to the loo and started chopping out lines with the door wide open behind his crouched frame.
"You want a line, love?" he asked over his shoulder.
"I'm fine, thanks."
"Not a great drug taker are you, Ben?"
I'll never forget that line. And frankly, I'm glad it's that kind of a line and not the other sort. But I love the use of the word 'great', as if it's a heroic and noble thing to be able to do. Still, it must be said, he actually was a great drug taker: he went on stage 15 minutes later and completely charmed the audience. I drove him home afterwards and as far as I remember, he fell asleep in the car - just like a toddler being taken home after a nativity play.
The band did a great show in front of the money guy last night apparently. In fact, since the Nottingham show, I described last week, they've been going down rather well. I feel - yes, you guessed it - like a proud parent. Chocolate eggs all round!
I spoke to Jack from the band, after lunch, telling him where I was.
"You're such a family man, Ben, aren't you?"
And it's true. I do like a bit of family action, particularly at Easter. But part of me felt bad at not being with the guys up in Teeside, and, the day before in Carlisle. I wrote about being paternal towards them in the last blog when I was talking about booking hotels (and boy, did that ever polarise people) and there is no way around it, a manager is the band's dad. For example, I got a text yesterday from one of the guys telling me that the rider was boozeless - not in a moany, whiny way, but asking if this was some clever Machiavellian plan to force them to have a sensible night before the following night's gig when they would be appearing in front of a man who might be investing in us. If only I had thought of that! Frankly, that sort of forward planning surely only happens in novels, and besides, if a band wants to get fucked up it will manage it regardless of the quality of rider.
I'm glad this band are fairly sensible. I mean, don't get me wrong, they love a drink - the drink the sort of amount, which if drunk by me renders me a hiccuping, slurring fool who hates himself in the morning. Crucially though, they don't appear to have any really worrying vices. But would I notice? Just as Maddy managed to sneak in at least a dozen mini eggs yesterday without me noticing, the band could actually be crack-dealing under my nose and I would just think they had some weird friends. I say this based on all my years in the music business without noticing people having drink or drug problems. OK, so when I was A&Ring 60ft Dolls, even I noticed that there may have been issues when the drummer tried to shoot me in the studio with an air pistol and the bass player seemed fond of red wine for breakfast. But on the whole, I honestly didn't see anyone really losing it. And it wasn't that I was far away it - I mean, I drove Elastica to their first handful of shows! Yes, that's me at the wheel of a Transit with a seasoned heroin addict in the back introducing enthusiastic newcomers to Mr Brown - or so I'm told, at least. Me, I was wondering if we were at Membury Services yet. My first Head of A&R actually had Talcum in his nickname, but did I ever see him doing coke? In fact, did he ever offer me any? No. Bit annoyed about that, come to think of it - maybe it was just a rumour, maybe he just used a lot of baby powder after taking a bath. Then of course came the full-on Britpop years - where everyone was supposedly on coke. My main memories are of people trying and failing to buy it in the small hours - like a teenage boys trying to lose their virginity - more energy being expended on talking about it than actually doing it.
There were eventually some dark years when I worked for a indie label whose owners did a lot of drugs. But again, I had to be the organised one; I had to be the 'dad'. It was annoying really because most of them were my age or older and yet they seemed to be having all the fun while I had to be the one who was together and reliable. I remember one time where I had to pick up the singer - a very famous British TV actor - for a live TV appearance. He was also one of the owners and therefore my employer. He'd been out all night and I'd failed to get hold of him on the phone all afternoon. With about an hour to go before the show aired, I drove round to his house in Tufnell Park. Eventually, he answered the door. Naked.
"Oh hello, love - what time is it?"
"It's 5.30 - you've got this show at 7."
"Oh right," he said, totally unfazed,"Hang on a tic..."
When we got to the Whitehall Theatre, where they filmed the daily Jack Doherty show, we had 20 minutes before it started. We raced through the stage door entrance and up the back stairs to the dressing room. Without pausing to hang up his jacket, make himself at home, or even take a breath, the singer b-lined it to the loo and started chopping out lines with the door wide open behind his crouched frame.
"You want a line, love?" he asked over his shoulder.
"I'm fine, thanks."
"Not a great drug taker are you, Ben?"
I'll never forget that line. And frankly, I'm glad it's that kind of a line and not the other sort. But I love the use of the word 'great', as if it's a heroic and noble thing to be able to do. Still, it must be said, he actually was a great drug taker: he went on stage 15 minutes later and completely charmed the audience. I drove him home afterwards and as far as I remember, he fell asleep in the car - just like a toddler being taken home after a nativity play.
The band did a great show in front of the money guy last night apparently. In fact, since the Nottingham show, I described last week, they've been going down rather well. I feel - yes, you guessed it - like a proud parent. Chocolate eggs all round!
Monday, 17 March 2008
"You guys need to get a girl singer..."
I've been very busy being a manager recently.
This is my rather showy excuse for not having written the blog for over a week. I appreciate that to many of you 'busy being a manager' must sound rather like 'I've been organising a piss up in a brewery, managing my own way out of a paper bag and negotiating the logistics of my arse and my elbow' but it does appear that there are actually quite a lot of things to do when you look after a band, and the moment you've done them all, there suddenly appear to be more things on the list that all should have been done way before the things you've actually just done.
There are indeed so many things to be done as a band manager that frankly I don't know how I'm finding the time to write this, not to speak of doing another thing for the Guardian. This one is about the Beatles incidentally, just in case you haven't read anything about them for a day or so. By the way, if you haven't seen today's Sun headline yet, you're in for a treat.
So our Scottish band are playing some dates outside Scotland for the first time. It's quite exciting. Well, apart from the boring stuff, like booking hotels - I've taken it upon myself to book their accommodation but some manager-chums are telling me that I should make the band do this, it sets too paternal an example, apparently. (Honestly, I don't know - you tell me - should I leave it to them?)
Anyway, at least I haven't had to book the shows myself. I was doing that for our girl band earlier this year and frankly it was the most dispiriting thing I've ever experienced- akin to trying to get served at a fashionable bar where everyone is taller, more attractive and louder than you, plus you don't speak the language. You email local promoters and they either ignore your mails or tell you that they only do 'metal' acts or 'local bands that pull'. Or you phone them up (if you've managed to get the number, which always appears to be a closely guarded secret) and it's like talking to a slightly stoned teenager - "Yeah , I'll check out the Myspace, dude..." At this point the temptation to say, "I've got 20 years music industry experience! I've made records you've danced to like a twat! I know what I'm talking about when I''m telling you they're great!" is quite intense but would possibly have a counterproductive effect. Charlie, my business partner, who actually has way more hit records under his belt than I do, had a go booking dates for the girls and for the first week was greeted with the same wall of indifference that I got. Then, just as he was about to play the Don't You Know Who I Am? card, someone gave him a gig. We took the rest of the afternoon off. I think the promoter may have given it to him by mistake but by then it was too late. Anyway, since he got it, he's been on fire - he's got them about ten shows now. Ra-hey! Me, I managed one Bath Moles and some gig in Bristol in what appeared to be a urine bottling plant. At the end of the night, the drunk promoter refused to pay us. Presumably he'd spent all the takings on lager in order to convert it into more wee.
So when it came to looking after the Scottish band I couldn't face doing the gig-phony-uppy thing. Fortunately, I managed to get them an agent and she's a total pleasure to deal with. I wish everyone I dealt with was more like her. Funny, as a manager you really notice all the things that you heard yourself being accused of when you did A&R: when people don't call you back for a day, or sometimes just never call back, or claim to have lost or eaten whatever it was you sent them by registered post. It's the real world, which, if you're sheltered from it - i.e. if you're someone to whom everyone wants to speak, because you represent warehouses stuffed with record deals, cash and supermodels - is a world you never see. It's good for the soul, I suppose, but not good for the mobile phone bill which - and I'm speaking to you, Mr and Mrs Orange - is an itemised monthly bastard.
Lucy, our booking agent, works for an old friend of mine, Charlie, who used to be The Levellers' agent then put his foot to the floor and now has his own agency, which looks after some of the UK's biggest groups. We are, of course, currently one of the UK's smallest groups, so the first step towards joining the upper echelons of Charlie's roster is to play some shows away from home. But how do you do this when no one has heard of you? Answer: The club show. These are essentially indie discos that have a few bands playing based on the theory that the DJs have the taste to play good records so may as well book the bands as well.
So I went up to Nottingham last week to see them play a club night called Radar. The venue -The Bodega Social - is a good old-fashioned building with high ceilings and a covered rear outdoor area where there appeared to be some sort of smoking competition going on. In the bar the walls are covered with framed photos of bands the Bodega has played host to recently - Kate Nash, Jack Penate, The Wombats... Next week Duffy was playing. We were getting a fee and a rider ("a crate of beers and softs" - mmm, got to love a soft.) Oh yes, it appeared we really had entered The Big Time.
The support band - if such a thing exists in the context of a club night - were female fronted. "And she's French," pointed out Jack, our singer. The French singer in question was, it must be said, really attractive too: kind of damaged blonde with a waspish figure and violent cheekbones. All this and French. We couldn't wait to check out her band Tramp (incidentally, I wanted to put a link to their Myspace here but it doesn't appear to exist).
Expectations for Tramp were perhaps excessive. As the singer stalked the stage, gurning at members of the audience in a Hazel O'Connorish, wide-eyed, I'm-a-bit-mad-me sort of way, the rest of the band plodded away in the background. She had an odd voice that ticked all the boxes like 'in tune' and 'powerful' but managed to remain resolutely unappealing. I felt a warm glow of confidence and relief that those involved with bands get when they know there's no competition - like the band who meet Spinal Tap in the lobby of the hotel who are playing the Enormodome. We watched the rest of the set along with the rest of the small, bloke-heavy crowd.
When my band went onstage it was to an even smaller crowd, made up largely from members of Tramp and a couple of their mates. It started well and drinkers from the adjacent bar sauntered round the corner so they could see who was making this truly fantastic music. Or so I thought. As the show progressed there seemed to be a nice little knot of people who were getting into it, some of them even dancing. But then, inexplicably, one, then two, then three of the girls in the crowd decided it was time for a wee or a fag and b-lined it out of the room. No problem, I thought, as I stood there alongside two spindley indie blokes, the girls will be back soon with a whole new crowd of converts. Then the two indie men meandered back to the bar and it was just me and the sound guy left.
Jack and the band heroically played on. They did a new song, which was fantastic, the sound wasn't great but all the bits were falling into place musically and the band were performing their hearts out - Will's backing vocals keeping the whole thing underpinned beautifully and Robert locking everything down on the drums . Towards the end, a handful of people came up and had a conversation in front of the stage.
Eventually, like an operation, it was all over. We returned to the dressing room (more of a dressing corridor, actually - like the office that Tuttle gets in Brazil). We cracked open the crate of beers, we downed a few of the softs, we did the gig post-mortem thing.
There was no great secret as to why we hadn't connected. As the promotor said later: it was a club night, sometimes audiences can be weird - especially when there's a WKD promotion going on downstairs. Plus, people had come to dance to records they knew - that's how some club nights are - no doubt Duffy would have a field day the following week. This was proven later as the dancefloor was rammed with 2 For 1 Bacadi Breezer drinkers in mini-skirts dancing to the Klaxons. As the band and I joined the smoking competition going on outside, someone from Tramp sidled up and offered us one solution: "Tough one tonight, you guys need to get a girl singer, then your problems will be over..."
Next time: The band play Newcastle and Leeds. Rock and, to be perfectly frank, Roll!
This is my rather showy excuse for not having written the blog for over a week. I appreciate that to many of you 'busy being a manager' must sound rather like 'I've been organising a piss up in a brewery, managing my own way out of a paper bag and negotiating the logistics of my arse and my elbow' but it does appear that there are actually quite a lot of things to do when you look after a band, and the moment you've done them all, there suddenly appear to be more things on the list that all should have been done way before the things you've actually just done.
There are indeed so many things to be done as a band manager that frankly I don't know how I'm finding the time to write this, not to speak of doing another thing for the Guardian. This one is about the Beatles incidentally, just in case you haven't read anything about them for a day or so. By the way, if you haven't seen today's Sun headline yet, you're in for a treat.
So our Scottish band are playing some dates outside Scotland for the first time. It's quite exciting. Well, apart from the boring stuff, like booking hotels - I've taken it upon myself to book their accommodation but some manager-chums are telling me that I should make the band do this, it sets too paternal an example, apparently. (Honestly, I don't know - you tell me - should I leave it to them?)
Anyway, at least I haven't had to book the shows myself. I was doing that for our girl band earlier this year and frankly it was the most dispiriting thing I've ever experienced- akin to trying to get served at a fashionable bar where everyone is taller, more attractive and louder than you, plus you don't speak the language. You email local promoters and they either ignore your mails or tell you that they only do 'metal' acts or 'local bands that pull'. Or you phone them up (if you've managed to get the number, which always appears to be a closely guarded secret) and it's like talking to a slightly stoned teenager - "Yeah , I'll check out the Myspace, dude..." At this point the temptation to say, "I've got 20 years music industry experience! I've made records you've danced to like a twat! I know what I'm talking about when I''m telling you they're great!" is quite intense but would possibly have a counterproductive effect. Charlie, my business partner, who actually has way more hit records under his belt than I do, had a go booking dates for the girls and for the first week was greeted with the same wall of indifference that I got. Then, just as he was about to play the Don't You Know Who I Am? card, someone gave him a gig. We took the rest of the afternoon off. I think the promoter may have given it to him by mistake but by then it was too late. Anyway, since he got it, he's been on fire - he's got them about ten shows now. Ra-hey! Me, I managed one Bath Moles and some gig in Bristol in what appeared to be a urine bottling plant. At the end of the night, the drunk promoter refused to pay us. Presumably he'd spent all the takings on lager in order to convert it into more wee.
So when it came to looking after the Scottish band I couldn't face doing the gig-phony-uppy thing. Fortunately, I managed to get them an agent and she's a total pleasure to deal with. I wish everyone I dealt with was more like her. Funny, as a manager you really notice all the things that you heard yourself being accused of when you did A&R: when people don't call you back for a day, or sometimes just never call back, or claim to have lost or eaten whatever it was you sent them by registered post. It's the real world, which, if you're sheltered from it - i.e. if you're someone to whom everyone wants to speak, because you represent warehouses stuffed with record deals, cash and supermodels - is a world you never see. It's good for the soul, I suppose, but not good for the mobile phone bill which - and I'm speaking to you, Mr and Mrs Orange - is an itemised monthly bastard.
Lucy, our booking agent, works for an old friend of mine, Charlie, who used to be The Levellers' agent then put his foot to the floor and now has his own agency, which looks after some of the UK's biggest groups. We are, of course, currently one of the UK's smallest groups, so the first step towards joining the upper echelons of Charlie's roster is to play some shows away from home. But how do you do this when no one has heard of you? Answer: The club show. These are essentially indie discos that have a few bands playing based on the theory that the DJs have the taste to play good records so may as well book the bands as well.
So I went up to Nottingham last week to see them play a club night called Radar. The venue -The Bodega Social - is a good old-fashioned building with high ceilings and a covered rear outdoor area where there appeared to be some sort of smoking competition going on. In the bar the walls are covered with framed photos of bands the Bodega has played host to recently - Kate Nash, Jack Penate, The Wombats... Next week Duffy was playing. We were getting a fee and a rider ("a crate of beers and softs" - mmm, got to love a soft.) Oh yes, it appeared we really had entered The Big Time.
The support band - if such a thing exists in the context of a club night - were female fronted. "And she's French," pointed out Jack, our singer. The French singer in question was, it must be said, really attractive too: kind of damaged blonde with a waspish figure and violent cheekbones. All this and French. We couldn't wait to check out her band Tramp (incidentally, I wanted to put a link to their Myspace here but it doesn't appear to exist).
Expectations for Tramp were perhaps excessive. As the singer stalked the stage, gurning at members of the audience in a Hazel O'Connorish, wide-eyed, I'm-a-bit-mad-me sort of way, the rest of the band plodded away in the background. She had an odd voice that ticked all the boxes like 'in tune' and 'powerful' but managed to remain resolutely unappealing. I felt a warm glow of confidence and relief that those involved with bands get when they know there's no competition - like the band who meet Spinal Tap in the lobby of the hotel who are playing the Enormodome. We watched the rest of the set along with the rest of the small, bloke-heavy crowd.
When my band went onstage it was to an even smaller crowd, made up largely from members of Tramp and a couple of their mates. It started well and drinkers from the adjacent bar sauntered round the corner so they could see who was making this truly fantastic music. Or so I thought. As the show progressed there seemed to be a nice little knot of people who were getting into it, some of them even dancing. But then, inexplicably, one, then two, then three of the girls in the crowd decided it was time for a wee or a fag and b-lined it out of the room. No problem, I thought, as I stood there alongside two spindley indie blokes, the girls will be back soon with a whole new crowd of converts. Then the two indie men meandered back to the bar and it was just me and the sound guy left.
Jack and the band heroically played on. They did a new song, which was fantastic, the sound wasn't great but all the bits were falling into place musically and the band were performing their hearts out - Will's backing vocals keeping the whole thing underpinned beautifully and Robert locking everything down on the drums . Towards the end, a handful of people came up and had a conversation in front of the stage.
Eventually, like an operation, it was all over. We returned to the dressing room (more of a dressing corridor, actually - like the office that Tuttle gets in Brazil). We cracked open the crate of beers, we downed a few of the softs, we did the gig post-mortem thing.
There was no great secret as to why we hadn't connected. As the promotor said later: it was a club night, sometimes audiences can be weird - especially when there's a WKD promotion going on downstairs. Plus, people had come to dance to records they knew - that's how some club nights are - no doubt Duffy would have a field day the following week. This was proven later as the dancefloor was rammed with 2 For 1 Bacadi Breezer drinkers in mini-skirts dancing to the Klaxons. As the band and I joined the smoking competition going on outside, someone from Tramp sidled up and offered us one solution: "Tough one tonight, you guys need to get a girl singer, then your problems will be over..."
Next time: The band play Newcastle and Leeds. Rock and, to be perfectly frank, Roll!
Sunday, 9 March 2008
The 'Industry Scum' Genre
So I said I'd write about Kill Your Friends and true to my word, I will. I'll try not to go into it at length because it would spoil it for you, but I will say that there are two things, which instantly recommend it: it makes you want to find out what happens right to the end and it makes you laugh. There's not really much to argue with there is there?
As you probably already know, it's a book about an A&R man and it's set in the late nineties, just before the Internet took hold and, come to think of it, just before all the other things we deal with on a daily basis took hold: reality TV, ubiquitous mobile phones, Al-Qaeda and terrorism fear, eco-fear and Coldplay-style alterno-balladry.
The music business Niven describes is one I was very familiar with and he catches the time very well, apart from one major plot twist involving use of many different Internet cafes by the central character - I don't recall there being any Internet cafes around in 1997 and if there were, the A&R people I knew then wouldn't have known their arse from their email. I remember getting Internet lessons en-mass when I was at BMG, given by one of the facilities guys who happened to know a bit more than anybody else about the new technology. This bloke, a laid back, charming surfer dude is now is now one of the most powerful players at Universal, in charge of all their European online strategy. If Niven's character really had existed in '97, his prowess with a computer would have certainly furnished him with an alternative career once the A&R stopped paying.
But I'm nit-picking, the book rollocks along with a masterful pace. As I said in a previous blog, I'd never heard of Niven but a few people I know worked with him and one of them tells me his own character is not a million miles away from his character Steve Stelfox, a coke and booze-fueled sex addict who has no interest in music and gets away with murdering people. Clearly, Niven never murdered anyone but apparently the tales of coke-fueled visits to prostitutes and general misogyny are based largely on his own experiences.
Hmm. I'm not buying this; the character is a two-dimensional cypher. It's testament to the writing that you are bothered what happens next because not only does Stelfox have no redeeming features (there are times when I imagined Niven sitting, hunched over his keyboard, thinking, "Is he cunty enough here? Perhaps if I added a few more insults to the injury it would work better ...") but he also he has no backstory, no inner life, no third dimension. Comparisons with Patrick Bateman are obvious but the key difference is that despite there being no clear-cut backstory in American Psycho you get a very distinct picture of Bateman's pathology which you don't with Stelfox. And besides, Stelfox is no screw-up - he's frequently the only sensible-thinker in the story. Madman he is not. But you never know why Stelfox hates everyone and everything and needs to have sex with anything female and earn more than anyone. The only reason for this besides obvious dramatic reasons, is that this is what A&R men are supposed to be like; this is how they've always been depicted so why break with tradition? Everyone hates A&R men, just as they hate traffic wardens, tax inspectors and estate agents.
It was very enlightening to read all those responses to my piece in the Guardian last week - almost all of them were along the lines of "Die A&R men, die! You talentless, freeloading bunch of bastards!" The contentious headline 'A&Rs Are The Unsung Heroes Of The Music Industry' didn't help (the editor added this, the one I gave them, 'Guy Hands: The New Gerald Ratner?', clearly wasn't contentious enough). I think most people saw the headline and responded to that, they didn't actually read the piece. The point is that from the first fictional depiction of a talent scout (probably in 1959's Espresso Bongo - 'Johnny Jackson, a sleazy talent agent, discovers teenager Bert Rudge singing in a coffee house') to more recent things like Keith Allen's A&R man in that terrible girl band thing The Young Person's Guide To Becoming A Rock Star or Jimmy Nails equally rubbish Crocodile Shoes to the faux brutality of Simon Cowell on all his shows, A&R people (almost always male) are heartless, cash-chasing, bastards who lead privileged existences with little or no justification (I mean, when have they ever written a song or played an instrument?)
And actually when you think about it, shrift have always been shortest for those involved behind the scenes in the entertainment industry - not just music, but also newspapers (check out Burt Lancaster's genuinely malevolent gossip columnist JJ Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success , surely the inspiration behind cartoon food critic Anton Ego in last year's Ratatouille) or movies (The Player) or ballet (The Red Shoes) or even other actors getting behind the scenes (A Star Is Born ). And incidentally I'm only mentioning quality stuff here, there are plenty more examples of evil entertainment industry types in long-forgotten TV series and films. (Here I must mention Jumping Bean Bag, a 1976 Play For Today, which my friend Russell salvaged from the BBC archives and eventually got shown with Bob Stanley's patronage at The Barbican)
So Niven's novel falls into the rich tradition of what we should call the 'Industry Scum' genre. As I said, there are laughs aplenty throughout, not least the slightly scary Goldie-like character Rage, who having failed to order a burger in a top Cannes seafood restaurant and asked for whatever they have, receives a plate of quivering squid: "Are you having a giraffe, cunt?" he asks the waiter. Also the descriptions of the on-a-sixpence loyalty turns that record company staff make towards A&R men depending on a good or bad Radio 1 reaction are spot on. Niven's depiction of the industry reaction to Princess Diana's death struck a chord with me too. Although he doesn't describe it as such, it was like a music business 9/11 - all-hands meetings about 'charity albums' taking place all over London and playlists getting changed overnight due to insensitive lyrics or offensive band names. He doesn't mention it in the book, but a band I A&R'd at the time had their big-break effectively nullified by Diana's death, when the re-release of You And Me Song was scuppered by their name. They were called, in case you're forgotten, The Wannadies.
Anyway, I've recommended the book enough now, not just here but to people I know who I think might like it. I can't help myself. But there is a part of me that still wants to read a book about the music business which doesn't depict the staff as bastards. Sure, they can be inept and comically talentless at times (we all have long lists of bands we saw and passed on that are now household names) but do they always have to be cynical, evil bastards? I want to read a book like David Nobbs' The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin but rather than it being set in Sunshine Desserts, I want it set in a record company. I can picture the CJ-like managing director already getting bands into his office to belittle them on his farting chairs while the A&R man squirms. It'll probably never happen, largely due to my agent's more astute grasp of the market than me, but hey I can dream...
As you probably already know, it's a book about an A&R man and it's set in the late nineties, just before the Internet took hold and, come to think of it, just before all the other things we deal with on a daily basis took hold: reality TV, ubiquitous mobile phones, Al-Qaeda and terrorism fear, eco-fear and Coldplay-style alterno-balladry.
The music business Niven describes is one I was very familiar with and he catches the time very well, apart from one major plot twist involving use of many different Internet cafes by the central character - I don't recall there being any Internet cafes around in 1997 and if there were, the A&R people I knew then wouldn't have known their arse from their email. I remember getting Internet lessons en-mass when I was at BMG, given by one of the facilities guys who happened to know a bit more than anybody else about the new technology. This bloke, a laid back, charming surfer dude is now is now one of the most powerful players at Universal, in charge of all their European online strategy. If Niven's character really had existed in '97, his prowess with a computer would have certainly furnished him with an alternative career once the A&R stopped paying.
But I'm nit-picking, the book rollocks along with a masterful pace. As I said in a previous blog, I'd never heard of Niven but a few people I know worked with him and one of them tells me his own character is not a million miles away from his character Steve Stelfox, a coke and booze-fueled sex addict who has no interest in music and gets away with murdering people. Clearly, Niven never murdered anyone but apparently the tales of coke-fueled visits to prostitutes and general misogyny are based largely on his own experiences.
Hmm. I'm not buying this; the character is a two-dimensional cypher. It's testament to the writing that you are bothered what happens next because not only does Stelfox have no redeeming features (there are times when I imagined Niven sitting, hunched over his keyboard, thinking, "Is he cunty enough here? Perhaps if I added a few more insults to the injury it would work better ...") but he also he has no backstory, no inner life, no third dimension. Comparisons with Patrick Bateman are obvious but the key difference is that despite there being no clear-cut backstory in American Psycho you get a very distinct picture of Bateman's pathology which you don't with Stelfox. And besides, Stelfox is no screw-up - he's frequently the only sensible-thinker in the story. Madman he is not. But you never know why Stelfox hates everyone and everything and needs to have sex with anything female and earn more than anyone. The only reason for this besides obvious dramatic reasons, is that this is what A&R men are supposed to be like; this is how they've always been depicted so why break with tradition? Everyone hates A&R men, just as they hate traffic wardens, tax inspectors and estate agents.
It was very enlightening to read all those responses to my piece in the Guardian last week - almost all of them were along the lines of "Die A&R men, die! You talentless, freeloading bunch of bastards!" The contentious headline 'A&Rs Are The Unsung Heroes Of The Music Industry' didn't help (the editor added this, the one I gave them, 'Guy Hands: The New Gerald Ratner?', clearly wasn't contentious enough). I think most people saw the headline and responded to that, they didn't actually read the piece. The point is that from the first fictional depiction of a talent scout (probably in 1959's Espresso Bongo - 'Johnny Jackson, a sleazy talent agent, discovers teenager Bert Rudge singing in a coffee house') to more recent things like Keith Allen's A&R man in that terrible girl band thing The Young Person's Guide To Becoming A Rock Star or Jimmy Nails equally rubbish Crocodile Shoes to the faux brutality of Simon Cowell on all his shows, A&R people (almost always male) are heartless, cash-chasing, bastards who lead privileged existences with little or no justification (I mean, when have they ever written a song or played an instrument?)
And actually when you think about it, shrift have always been shortest for those involved behind the scenes in the entertainment industry - not just music, but also newspapers (check out Burt Lancaster's genuinely malevolent gossip columnist JJ Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success , surely the inspiration behind cartoon food critic Anton Ego in last year's Ratatouille) or movies (The Player) or ballet (The Red Shoes) or even other actors getting behind the scenes (A Star Is Born ). And incidentally I'm only mentioning quality stuff here, there are plenty more examples of evil entertainment industry types in long-forgotten TV series and films. (Here I must mention Jumping Bean Bag, a 1976 Play For Today, which my friend Russell salvaged from the BBC archives and eventually got shown with Bob Stanley's patronage at The Barbican)
So Niven's novel falls into the rich tradition of what we should call the 'Industry Scum' genre. As I said, there are laughs aplenty throughout, not least the slightly scary Goldie-like character Rage, who having failed to order a burger in a top Cannes seafood restaurant and asked for whatever they have, receives a plate of quivering squid: "Are you having a giraffe, cunt?" he asks the waiter. Also the descriptions of the on-a-sixpence loyalty turns that record company staff make towards A&R men depending on a good or bad Radio 1 reaction are spot on. Niven's depiction of the industry reaction to Princess Diana's death struck a chord with me too. Although he doesn't describe it as such, it was like a music business 9/11 - all-hands meetings about 'charity albums' taking place all over London and playlists getting changed overnight due to insensitive lyrics or offensive band names. He doesn't mention it in the book, but a band I A&R'd at the time had their big-break effectively nullified by Diana's death, when the re-release of You And Me Song was scuppered by their name. They were called, in case you're forgotten, The Wannadies.
Anyway, I've recommended the book enough now, not just here but to people I know who I think might like it. I can't help myself. But there is a part of me that still wants to read a book about the music business which doesn't depict the staff as bastards. Sure, they can be inept and comically talentless at times (we all have long lists of bands we saw and passed on that are now household names) but do they always have to be cynical, evil bastards? I want to read a book like David Nobbs' The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin but rather than it being set in Sunshine Desserts, I want it set in a record company. I can picture the CJ-like managing director already getting bands into his office to belittle them on his farting chairs while the A&R man squirms. It'll probably never happen, largely due to my agent's more astute grasp of the market than me, but hey I can dream...
Thursday, 28 February 2008
A Night in Hoxton
Of course, having been an A&R man for a million years in the 90s, I know a fair amount of folk who still do it. And I went out with two of them last Wednesday for a Vietnamese meal in Kingsland Rd - no, not the predictable Viet Hoa - the much better Song Que at bit further along - check out the soft shell crab, it's crunchy, it's chewy, like a fishy Double Decker, you just don't know where you are!
As we ate, we discussed the ludicrous Guy Hands anti-A&R rant, which I won't go into here, suffice to ask: Is he the new Gerald Ratner? Someone asked me to write something about it for the Guardian so you can read my thoughts here if you like. We also talked about Kill Your Friends, which one of us had read, one of us was reading (me - I finished it later that night) and one of us wasn't looking at on principle. I'll get to it later but in case you're wondering I'm happy to eat my words - it's very readable. Damn.
After eating we wandered down Kingsland road to Hoxton Square to get to the screamingly fashionable Hoxton Bar & Grill. I don't think they do actually grill anything there apart from people trying to get in who don't look like Noel Fielding, but there is a bar and we walked past it, making for the entrance at the back. Then we realised that we were walking past a queue, not just any old bored line of people looking at their watches, no, this queue made loud noises, everyone knew everyone else - it was a queue almost entirely built from A&R people. We found someone half way down it to talk to - I hate doing that, it's like driving in the bus lane and nipping in front of someone who's been queuing up properly for hours. Still, it did mean we got in quicker despite everyone behind us muttering obscenities.
The band we were there to see are called White Lies who are four 19 year-olds from Acton. They used to be a band called Fear Of Flying, who I remember quite liking when I was at V2. They used to sound a bit like The Teardrop Explodes, an exuberant bass player and chunky chords backing a .. well, actually that's where it fell down: the singer, whose voice had all the back-of-throat Julian Cope mannerisms but without any of the character. Also they looked a bit rubbish. Mind you, at the time they had just done their GSCEs and had armies of spots marching all over their faces.
What has happened to their stock in the meantime is little short of amazing. OK, so the acne is gone, they have new management, partially new musical direction and new trousers, but FOF attracted a handful of A&R people who sniffed and left. White Lies on the other hand is wall to wall A&R - and not just scouts, but serious, swaggering executives. In the first 10 minutes as we stood waiting for the band to come on, I saw the A&R men who look after Snow Patrol, Kate Nash, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Lilly Allen, Kylie Minogue, Babyshambles, Hot Chip and Corine Bailey Rae, plus managing directors and chairmen from Sony and Universal, not to mention cool labels like Nude, Fantastic Plastic and of course Moshi Moshi whose gig it was. Actually the headline act was Semifinalists, who I used to look after at V2 and on whose album I spent some considerable time working last year - did they tell me they were over in the UK doing shows? No, they did not. Artists, eh? Can't live with them...
Anyway, eventually, after what seemed like days, during which time the venue managed to cram in most of London and some of Japan, the lights go down and the band take the stage. They look great, it has to be said. Basically it's FOF without the puppy fat and all wearing black. There is also some serious hair going on - angular, foppish and sleek. They kick off with a song that goes on for days. In a parallel universe they are still playing it. It is stoppy-starty with long passages of single plucked guitar note over Peter Hookish slabs of bass. It's pretty good. The rhythm section are undeniably excellent, the drummer is not only a great player but looks - as my mate standing next to me, who signed Blur said - like Alex James. He's the star of the band. Which is the problem really. The singer hasn't really moved on from FOF that much. He still has the same Julian Cope meets Tony Hadley voice plus he never opens his eyes when he sings, never makes contact with the audience.
After the eighth minute of the first song, my mind begins to wander. I start playing Count The A&R Men which passes the time until song 2, which is much better. Well, much shorter anyway. They have obviously been listening to the Killers but also some of the things which the Killers were inspired by like Psychedelic Furs and The Cars - in fact as we leave later, I spot Ed Bueller the man who produced Suede and spent some time being in The Psychedelic Furs.
We're on our way to another bar where there is an aftershow for a fashion launch. It's like an episode of Nathan Barley tonight. Earlier in the evening, I'd bumped into my lovely friend Nicky, who has gone from sleepy-eyed, shy 20-something to running a very successful fashion PR company. She is hosting a Nudie Jeans launch in conjunction with Amnesty International in a bar along from where we had dinner. Through the windows, I can see inside the brightly-lit room, it's full of insanely young and fashionable types all jooshing around. I see my reflection in its flat cap and stripey scarf and long for a cup of tea and a book. "We're having an aftershow round the corner in The Macbeth," says Nicky, "You've got to come, the Cribs are playing - with Johnny Marr! The Horrors are DJing, there's a free bar ..."
"Great!" I hate the Cribs and The Horrors are unspeakably bad but Nicky is brilliant and well, free drinks, what could possibly go wrong?
Sure enough, that's where we end up. The Macbeth - or The Scottish Pub as I'm sure superstitious locals call it - is a refreshingly ungentrified East London boozer, Dirk or Squiggly or whatever his name is from The Horrors turns out to be a really good DJ and booze drinks are courtesy of those fashionable people at Nudie. It's an evening of lovely serendipity as well: I need a sleeve designer for my Scottish Band (no, I'm not superstitious about them, I just don't want to name them in the blog - I'm sure you'll work who they are eventually!) and I bump into Rob who I had been thinking of contacting but didn't have his number. Retts, who took pictures of my girl band is there taking pics of famous people for Nudie, I tell her the bloke who designed the stuffed animals in the Lightspeed Champion video is there but she doesn't seem impressed. My great friend Bakul is there too - she, Retts and Nicky all used to live together in her flat in Camden in the mid-90s, which became the unofficial aftershow destination. If she's not playing hostess, Bakul never misses a party. Most of London thinks her surname is Plus One.
I end up chatting with Laurence from Domino who I haven't seen in years (not since his label became massively successful) and he's still lovely. We realise we first met almost 20 years as I remind him of our Statten Island Ferry trip with Steve Lamacq during the New Music Seminar in 1991. "1990!" he corrects me. Bimey. It turns out he saw my Scottish band supporting Franz Ferdinand last year and thinks they're good. Funny, I realise for the first time what it feels like for band managers to hear that an A&R man 'quite likes' their act. Fortunately, having 'quite liked' hundreds of bands when I did A&R, I know that this is nothing to get overly excited about, it's a meaningless statement. But hey, Laurence likes the band! Hold the front page! Hang out the bunting! More champagne!
Eventually the surf wave music played by Faris Rotter (yes, that's his name, how could I forget?) gets too loud and the Cribs - with our without Marr - still haven't taken the small stage at the end of the bar so the three of us decide to leave. I give Matthew a big hug (an A&R bearhug as we call it) and then Michael offers me a lift to the tube station.
"What did you think of White Lies?" he asks, putting on the demo.
From my passenger seat, I tell him I thought the voice wasn't something I could imagine many people getting excited about. But you know what, who knows? I've just listened to the Myspace tracks and I'm warming to them. A&R's easy when you're not in the driving seat. That's why everyone thinks they can do it. Michael drops me off at Kings Cross and drives off home, mulling over whether he should put in an offer.
As we ate, we discussed the ludicrous Guy Hands anti-A&R rant, which I won't go into here, suffice to ask: Is he the new Gerald Ratner? Someone asked me to write something about it for the Guardian so you can read my thoughts here if you like. We also talked about Kill Your Friends, which one of us had read, one of us was reading (me - I finished it later that night) and one of us wasn't looking at on principle. I'll get to it later but in case you're wondering I'm happy to eat my words - it's very readable. Damn.
After eating we wandered down Kingsland road to Hoxton Square to get to the screamingly fashionable Hoxton Bar & Grill. I don't think they do actually grill anything there apart from people trying to get in who don't look like Noel Fielding, but there is a bar and we walked past it, making for the entrance at the back. Then we realised that we were walking past a queue, not just any old bored line of people looking at their watches, no, this queue made loud noises, everyone knew everyone else - it was a queue almost entirely built from A&R people. We found someone half way down it to talk to - I hate doing that, it's like driving in the bus lane and nipping in front of someone who's been queuing up properly for hours. Still, it did mean we got in quicker despite everyone behind us muttering obscenities.
The band we were there to see are called White Lies who are four 19 year-olds from Acton. They used to be a band called Fear Of Flying, who I remember quite liking when I was at V2. They used to sound a bit like The Teardrop Explodes, an exuberant bass player and chunky chords backing a .. well, actually that's where it fell down: the singer, whose voice had all the back-of-throat Julian Cope mannerisms but without any of the character. Also they looked a bit rubbish. Mind you, at the time they had just done their GSCEs and had armies of spots marching all over their faces.
What has happened to their stock in the meantime is little short of amazing. OK, so the acne is gone, they have new management, partially new musical direction and new trousers, but FOF attracted a handful of A&R people who sniffed and left. White Lies on the other hand is wall to wall A&R - and not just scouts, but serious, swaggering executives. In the first 10 minutes as we stood waiting for the band to come on, I saw the A&R men who look after Snow Patrol, Kate Nash, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Lilly Allen, Kylie Minogue, Babyshambles, Hot Chip and Corine Bailey Rae, plus managing directors and chairmen from Sony and Universal, not to mention cool labels like Nude, Fantastic Plastic and of course Moshi Moshi whose gig it was. Actually the headline act was Semifinalists, who I used to look after at V2 and on whose album I spent some considerable time working last year - did they tell me they were over in the UK doing shows? No, they did not. Artists, eh? Can't live with them...
Anyway, eventually, after what seemed like days, during which time the venue managed to cram in most of London and some of Japan, the lights go down and the band take the stage. They look great, it has to be said. Basically it's FOF without the puppy fat and all wearing black. There is also some serious hair going on - angular, foppish and sleek. They kick off with a song that goes on for days. In a parallel universe they are still playing it. It is stoppy-starty with long passages of single plucked guitar note over Peter Hookish slabs of bass. It's pretty good. The rhythm section are undeniably excellent, the drummer is not only a great player but looks - as my mate standing next to me, who signed Blur said - like Alex James. He's the star of the band. Which is the problem really. The singer hasn't really moved on from FOF that much. He still has the same Julian Cope meets Tony Hadley voice plus he never opens his eyes when he sings, never makes contact with the audience.
After the eighth minute of the first song, my mind begins to wander. I start playing Count The A&R Men which passes the time until song 2, which is much better. Well, much shorter anyway. They have obviously been listening to the Killers but also some of the things which the Killers were inspired by like Psychedelic Furs and The Cars - in fact as we leave later, I spot Ed Bueller the man who produced Suede and spent some time being in The Psychedelic Furs.
We're on our way to another bar where there is an aftershow for a fashion launch. It's like an episode of Nathan Barley tonight. Earlier in the evening, I'd bumped into my lovely friend Nicky, who has gone from sleepy-eyed, shy 20-something to running a very successful fashion PR company. She is hosting a Nudie Jeans launch in conjunction with Amnesty International in a bar along from where we had dinner. Through the windows, I can see inside the brightly-lit room, it's full of insanely young and fashionable types all jooshing around. I see my reflection in its flat cap and stripey scarf and long for a cup of tea and a book. "We're having an aftershow round the corner in The Macbeth," says Nicky, "You've got to come, the Cribs are playing - with Johnny Marr! The Horrors are DJing, there's a free bar ..."
"Great!" I hate the Cribs and The Horrors are unspeakably bad but Nicky is brilliant and well, free drinks, what could possibly go wrong?
Sure enough, that's where we end up. The Macbeth - or The Scottish Pub as I'm sure superstitious locals call it - is a refreshingly ungentrified East London boozer, Dirk or Squiggly or whatever his name is from The Horrors turns out to be a really good DJ and booze drinks are courtesy of those fashionable people at Nudie. It's an evening of lovely serendipity as well: I need a sleeve designer for my Scottish Band (no, I'm not superstitious about them, I just don't want to name them in the blog - I'm sure you'll work who they are eventually!) and I bump into Rob who I had been thinking of contacting but didn't have his number. Retts, who took pictures of my girl band is there taking pics of famous people for Nudie, I tell her the bloke who designed the stuffed animals in the Lightspeed Champion video is there but she doesn't seem impressed. My great friend Bakul is there too - she, Retts and Nicky all used to live together in her flat in Camden in the mid-90s, which became the unofficial aftershow destination. If she's not playing hostess, Bakul never misses a party. Most of London thinks her surname is Plus One.
I end up chatting with Laurence from Domino who I haven't seen in years (not since his label became massively successful) and he's still lovely. We realise we first met almost 20 years as I remind him of our Statten Island Ferry trip with Steve Lamacq during the New Music Seminar in 1991. "1990!" he corrects me. Bimey. It turns out he saw my Scottish band supporting Franz Ferdinand last year and thinks they're good. Funny, I realise for the first time what it feels like for band managers to hear that an A&R man 'quite likes' their act. Fortunately, having 'quite liked' hundreds of bands when I did A&R, I know that this is nothing to get overly excited about, it's a meaningless statement. But hey, Laurence likes the band! Hold the front page! Hang out the bunting! More champagne!
Eventually the surf wave music played by Faris Rotter (yes, that's his name, how could I forget?) gets too loud and the Cribs - with our without Marr - still haven't taken the small stage at the end of the bar so the three of us decide to leave. I give Matthew a big hug (an A&R bearhug as we call it) and then Michael offers me a lift to the tube station.
"What did you think of White Lies?" he asks, putting on the demo.
From my passenger seat, I tell him I thought the voice wasn't something I could imagine many people getting excited about. But you know what, who knows? I've just listened to the Myspace tracks and I'm warming to them. A&R's easy when you're not in the driving seat. That's why everyone thinks they can do it. Michael drops me off at Kings Cross and drives off home, mulling over whether he should put in an offer.
Sunday, 24 February 2008
A Cruel and Shallow Money Trench
Everyone is telling me that I have to read Kill Your Friends by John Niven. Well, when I say everyone, I mean a disproportionate amount of music business folk I’ve spoken to recently have mentioned it. Thinly-veiled real record company types make enough appearances to prompt those that recognise them into playing Spot The Mate. It’s a book about an A&R man written by an ex-A&R man and is set in the music business of the late 90s. It’s a book that I tried to write myself a few times and didn’t get much beyond the title, Scared Hitless.
I never knew John Niven – in fact, and this is weird, I’d never even heard of him until my friend Keith who runs an indie label and also writes fiction, mentioned that Niven had written this book. Now, clearly part of me is jealous and childish and wishes abject failure on someone who has not only succeeded in writing a book about the music business but has also managed to get it published, get a bit of a profile and get a 3 For 2 in Waterstones. But mainly, I really think the book on A&R needed to be written, a book that does justice to the madness and the idiocy of that part of the business which everyone thinks they know about – and now more than ever since the entire country thinks they are doing A&R when they watch The X-Factor.
So I was disappointed when I picked up a copy in Waterstones a couple of weeks ago and read the first five pages. I really wanted to find myself laughing or nodding in recognition and … well, I’m not going to unleash a torrent of scorn because I have yet to read the thing in full. This weekend, I was planning on doing just that but the Amazon package is locked away in some depot waiting for me to pick it up. Why didn’t I just buy it in Waterstones that day? Well, partly because I baulked at the tower of cliché in the first thousand words, I just couldn’t bring myself to part with cash for something so disappointing. It read like my fiction about the music business reads - like it was written by someone who is basing it on second hand accounts – the drugs, the laziness, the hopelessly untalented artists and the idiot managers. Normally when I write myself, I read back what I’ve written and think a large part of it is worthless but there are one or two good things which I’ll keep. But every time I’ve written about the music business it’s ALL junk; not a shard of originality or interesting thought. Normally the advice is to write about what you know but in my case it’s write about what you don’t know – the more into the dark I go, the better the fiction. Or so I’ve discovered, anyway.
The bloke who’s looking after the book I’ve written (not about the music business, but it does take its title from the Wire album, Pink Flag) initially read a chapter from my first novel and said he wasn’t interested in it; he had no belief in representing fiction about the music business. Funnily enough, the novel wasn’t actually about the music biz at all but it made enough references to it to bring him out in hives. “There’s no point in writing fiction about the music business,” he said, “because the fact is always going to be more interesting.”
And he’s right. Why make up stuff about how shocking and sordid and brutal the industry is when the facts are already brilliantly and hilariously in print in Hammer Of The Gods or The Dirt? Why tell a rags-to-riches story or vice versa about how it all went right or wrong, when you’ve got genius accounts like Black Vinyl, White Powder or Feel or Crazy From The Heat or Stoned?
Also, if I read that bloody Hunter S Thompson quotation about the music industry again I’ll shoot myself – everyone now seems to be using it in their email signature as if to say that, like Les McQueen, “it’s a shit business” but they’re wise to it.
Anyway, you can see where this is going can’t you? Bitter writer has a pop at successful writer in a futile attempt at claiming moral high ground. Notice though, that I haven’t even bloody read it. That’s like an NME writer saying he hates somebody’s record on principle because he objects to their trousers. Mind you, I think that’s pretty fair in pop – it is largely about the trousers.
But, listen, I promise to have read Kill Your Friends by next time, then I’ll either release a torrent of vitriol or tuck into my own words.
I never knew John Niven – in fact, and this is weird, I’d never even heard of him until my friend Keith who runs an indie label and also writes fiction, mentioned that Niven had written this book. Now, clearly part of me is jealous and childish and wishes abject failure on someone who has not only succeeded in writing a book about the music business but has also managed to get it published, get a bit of a profile and get a 3 For 2 in Waterstones. But mainly, I really think the book on A&R needed to be written, a book that does justice to the madness and the idiocy of that part of the business which everyone thinks they know about – and now more than ever since the entire country thinks they are doing A&R when they watch The X-Factor.
So I was disappointed when I picked up a copy in Waterstones a couple of weeks ago and read the first five pages. I really wanted to find myself laughing or nodding in recognition and … well, I’m not going to unleash a torrent of scorn because I have yet to read the thing in full. This weekend, I was planning on doing just that but the Amazon package is locked away in some depot waiting for me to pick it up. Why didn’t I just buy it in Waterstones that day? Well, partly because I baulked at the tower of cliché in the first thousand words, I just couldn’t bring myself to part with cash for something so disappointing. It read like my fiction about the music business reads - like it was written by someone who is basing it on second hand accounts – the drugs, the laziness, the hopelessly untalented artists and the idiot managers. Normally when I write myself, I read back what I’ve written and think a large part of it is worthless but there are one or two good things which I’ll keep. But every time I’ve written about the music business it’s ALL junk; not a shard of originality or interesting thought. Normally the advice is to write about what you know but in my case it’s write about what you don’t know – the more into the dark I go, the better the fiction. Or so I’ve discovered, anyway.
The bloke who’s looking after the book I’ve written (not about the music business, but it does take its title from the Wire album, Pink Flag) initially read a chapter from my first novel and said he wasn’t interested in it; he had no belief in representing fiction about the music business. Funnily enough, the novel wasn’t actually about the music biz at all but it made enough references to it to bring him out in hives. “There’s no point in writing fiction about the music business,” he said, “because the fact is always going to be more interesting.”
And he’s right. Why make up stuff about how shocking and sordid and brutal the industry is when the facts are already brilliantly and hilariously in print in Hammer Of The Gods or The Dirt? Why tell a rags-to-riches story or vice versa about how it all went right or wrong, when you’ve got genius accounts like Black Vinyl, White Powder or Feel or Crazy From The Heat or Stoned?
Also, if I read that bloody Hunter S Thompson quotation about the music industry again I’ll shoot myself – everyone now seems to be using it in their email signature as if to say that, like Les McQueen, “it’s a shit business” but they’re wise to it.
Anyway, you can see where this is going can’t you? Bitter writer has a pop at successful writer in a futile attempt at claiming moral high ground. Notice though, that I haven’t even bloody read it. That’s like an NME writer saying he hates somebody’s record on principle because he objects to their trousers. Mind you, I think that’s pretty fair in pop – it is largely about the trousers.
But, listen, I promise to have read Kill Your Friends by next time, then I’ll either release a torrent of vitriol or tuck into my own words.
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Papa's Got A Brand New Holdall
OK, I'll come clean. I was kind of overdramatising when I talked about fate in the last entry. But the interesting thing is, I suppose, how a large proportion of time spent managing a band turns out not to be on the Big Picture but on the really tiny things.
What happens is this: after breakfast - or as previously stated in my case, no breakfast - we load all our gear into the van. We left it in a room behind the B&B's reception after the gig and it's still all there: guitars, amps, bags... Then Charlie and I say goodbye to the girls, who have the long drive back to Swindon ahead of them. We are off to meet an old Web designer friend of Charlie's and later to go the studio where our other band will be midway through their second day's recording on the forthcoming single.
At the studio, the single is sounding amazing - particularly considering the tiny room they're doing it in but the owners there really know their stuff, they're trained BBC engineers who do this in their spare time - I must ask them why they call the place LaChunky, it almost undersells the place, as if it's some jokey voiceover room. Anyway, plug over, it's good, OK? The Web designer is amazing too, he's Travis' and the Fratellis' guy and has been doing Web design since 1994 - i.e. Internet prehistory. He totally reignites my belief in building bespoke Websites for bands instead of dumping everything on Myspace - plus, he lives in Byers Road which is full of brilliant 1950s snack bars and riches-laden charity shops.
It's still bright sun in a cloudless sky and we're walking in the vague direction of Glasgow Central Station in order to get a train to Elvis Presley Airport. Of course, it turns out that we're walking in the complete opposite direction, as I discover when we try to board a bus. The driver raises an Lanarkshire eyebrow at me and points to the bus stop on the other side of the street. It's always the same every time I come here, it's like Soho but on a city scale - I mean, in the same way that they shuffle Dean, Frith and Greek Streets around every couple of weeks, they do the same thing in Glasgow with entire portions of the city. Every time I come, Sauchihall Street is in a different place and Central Station... forget it, sometimes they put it in a different town.
So anyway, we manage to navigate our way as far as Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (too much space, too little to fill it with; a lifesize Elvis Presley sculpture next to a stuffed heron, anyone?) We actually go here so I can have a wee, loos in places of culture generally being better maintained. As I come back out onto the steps outside the building, Charlie's on the phone:
"A blue bag? A blue bag ... I don't remember, I'm afraid."
I remember seeing a blue bag go into the van. Phew, we remembered everything. We rock! I relax, making thumbs up signs at him.
"Well, if we've got it, yes, of course ..."
He let's his mobile arm flop down, the conversation is over.
"What's up?"
"We've taken someone's bag by mistake."
Bugger.
Now, this wouldn't have been too tricky had it not been for the fact that the band were now several hundred miles out of Glasgow on route to Wiltshire. And so the rest of our afternoon and evening became an odyssey of ludicrousness. The unfortunate traveller needed his bag (naturally containing passport, plane tickets, keys, small children ...) by Sunday so we'd have to get it up by courier. OK, not too onerous. And after phoning every courier company in the world, it transpired that DHL did an overnight service which cost about 50 quid during the week. Only trouble was, it was Friday and the office in Swindon closed at 6. Would the band make it back by then?
In fact they did make it back by then. Hooray! But guess what, DHL offices, don't accept credit or debit cards - only cheques. Yes, that's right, it may be 2008 but in DHL World, it's 1975. The band knew this though and brought cash. No go, they don't accept cash either, understandable, I suppose, the money could be stolen, or be novelty cash from a joke shop or maybe have a bit of dust on it. So we missed the overnight delivery. Never mind, we could still use the Same Day Service they helpfully provide at weekends:
"Certainly, sir ... Swindon to Glasgow you say? A small blue holdall? No Problemo! Let me see ... yes, that'll be £550 plus VAT."
Unsurprisingly, this service was more than happy to take my credit card number. I didn't give them the pleasure. Instead, we spoke to the B&B, forced the mobile number of the bag owner out of the afternoon language student on reception (this took about 30 minutes of concerted Slowspeak), spoke to the bag owner, who told us the hotel had agreed to pay costs, spoke to the B&B manager, who of course strenuously denied this on hearing it was a 500 quid situation, got more quotes from other couriers who were even more costly and then came up with a simple idea that I never thought would work but which solved all. We offered to pay a couple of the band's mates to go up and deliver the bag. In the end, it was Pauline, the band's personal Velvet Hammer (gets people to do things without raising her voice) who drove up with her mate Soph (the band's guitarist). They stopped off in Liverpool on the way back and painted the town completely turquoise, but that's another story.
So a happy ending of sorts: we gave some money to a far worthier cause than DHL and the gentleman, reunited with his bag, made the flight on Sunday. The B&B reluctantly admitted partial liability without fulling confessing to being idiots and shoving someone else's bag next to ours with no ID tag on it. I'm still disappointed with their uselessness and if I was a harsher man I'd write their name here so you could avoid staying there should you find yourself in Glasgow. Their showers were rubbish too.
I must say, though, as far as management goes it was perhaps our first 'get out of that one' scenario and in terms of thinking on our feet I think we're now well-equipped to deal with any future 'band detained at airport with massive amount of drugs and porn' situation. Bring it on!
What happens is this: after breakfast - or as previously stated in my case, no breakfast - we load all our gear into the van. We left it in a room behind the B&B's reception after the gig and it's still all there: guitars, amps, bags... Then Charlie and I say goodbye to the girls, who have the long drive back to Swindon ahead of them. We are off to meet an old Web designer friend of Charlie's and later to go the studio where our other band will be midway through their second day's recording on the forthcoming single.
At the studio, the single is sounding amazing - particularly considering the tiny room they're doing it in but the owners there really know their stuff, they're trained BBC engineers who do this in their spare time - I must ask them why they call the place LaChunky, it almost undersells the place, as if it's some jokey voiceover room. Anyway, plug over, it's good, OK? The Web designer is amazing too, he's Travis' and the Fratellis' guy and has been doing Web design since 1994 - i.e. Internet prehistory. He totally reignites my belief in building bespoke Websites for bands instead of dumping everything on Myspace - plus, he lives in Byers Road which is full of brilliant 1950s snack bars and riches-laden charity shops.
It's still bright sun in a cloudless sky and we're walking in the vague direction of Glasgow Central Station in order to get a train to Elvis Presley Airport. Of course, it turns out that we're walking in the complete opposite direction, as I discover when we try to board a bus. The driver raises an Lanarkshire eyebrow at me and points to the bus stop on the other side of the street. It's always the same every time I come here, it's like Soho but on a city scale - I mean, in the same way that they shuffle Dean, Frith and Greek Streets around every couple of weeks, they do the same thing in Glasgow with entire portions of the city. Every time I come, Sauchihall Street is in a different place and Central Station... forget it, sometimes they put it in a different town.
So anyway, we manage to navigate our way as far as Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (too much space, too little to fill it with; a lifesize Elvis Presley sculpture next to a stuffed heron, anyone?) We actually go here so I can have a wee, loos in places of culture generally being better maintained. As I come back out onto the steps outside the building, Charlie's on the phone:
"A blue bag? A blue bag ... I don't remember, I'm afraid."
I remember seeing a blue bag go into the van. Phew, we remembered everything. We rock! I relax, making thumbs up signs at him.
"Well, if we've got it, yes, of course ..."
He let's his mobile arm flop down, the conversation is over.
"What's up?"
"We've taken someone's bag by mistake."
Bugger.
Now, this wouldn't have been too tricky had it not been for the fact that the band were now several hundred miles out of Glasgow on route to Wiltshire. And so the rest of our afternoon and evening became an odyssey of ludicrousness. The unfortunate traveller needed his bag (naturally containing passport, plane tickets, keys, small children ...) by Sunday so we'd have to get it up by courier. OK, not too onerous. And after phoning every courier company in the world, it transpired that DHL did an overnight service which cost about 50 quid during the week. Only trouble was, it was Friday and the office in Swindon closed at 6. Would the band make it back by then?
In fact they did make it back by then. Hooray! But guess what, DHL offices, don't accept credit or debit cards - only cheques. Yes, that's right, it may be 2008 but in DHL World, it's 1975. The band knew this though and brought cash. No go, they don't accept cash either, understandable, I suppose, the money could be stolen, or be novelty cash from a joke shop or maybe have a bit of dust on it. So we missed the overnight delivery. Never mind, we could still use the Same Day Service they helpfully provide at weekends:
"Certainly, sir ... Swindon to Glasgow you say? A small blue holdall? No Problemo! Let me see ... yes, that'll be £550 plus VAT."
Unsurprisingly, this service was more than happy to take my credit card number. I didn't give them the pleasure. Instead, we spoke to the B&B, forced the mobile number of the bag owner out of the afternoon language student on reception (this took about 30 minutes of concerted Slowspeak), spoke to the bag owner, who told us the hotel had agreed to pay costs, spoke to the B&B manager, who of course strenuously denied this on hearing it was a 500 quid situation, got more quotes from other couriers who were even more costly and then came up with a simple idea that I never thought would work but which solved all. We offered to pay a couple of the band's mates to go up and deliver the bag. In the end, it was Pauline, the band's personal Velvet Hammer (gets people to do things without raising her voice) who drove up with her mate Soph (the band's guitarist). They stopped off in Liverpool on the way back and painted the town completely turquoise, but that's another story.
So a happy ending of sorts: we gave some money to a far worthier cause than DHL and the gentleman, reunited with his bag, made the flight on Sunday. The B&B reluctantly admitted partial liability without fulling confessing to being idiots and shoving someone else's bag next to ours with no ID tag on it. I'm still disappointed with their uselessness and if I was a harsher man I'd write their name here so you could avoid staying there should you find yourself in Glasgow. Their showers were rubbish too.
I must say, though, as far as management goes it was perhaps our first 'get out of that one' scenario and in terms of thinking on our feet I think we're now well-equipped to deal with any future 'band detained at airport with massive amount of drugs and porn' situation. Bring it on!
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