Now That's What I Call A Compilation

This Father's Day I asked for nothing more than to be left alone. I just wanted to sit in the sun with a cup of tea and read one of the books from the teetering pile next to the bed. Anyone who has children will understand the excitement I felt at this prospect. Far from making me the most boring man in the world - although perhaps it does qualify me for the heats - this is surely what most dads want on their day. Certainly not a shaving mug, a 'novelty' card or God forbid, a CD compilation with the word Dad in the title.

If there is a God, I thank him or her that I wasn't the recipient of a Dad compilation on Sunday. Did you notice any of these pernicious things? I meant there's nothing necessarily wrong with We Will Rock You, Addicted To Love or Sweet Home Alabama but if anything proves Bill Drummond's notion of all recorded music having run its course, these compilations do. There is just nothing left of these tracks is there? Maybe for kids who've never heard them but surely not for the dads who were bludgeoned with them for 20 years by Simon Bates and now are insulted by them via the Tannoys of every chainstore and hold music of every helpdesk.

I speak specifically of EMI's 3 CD set Dad Rocks! and Universal's Dad's Jukebox - with tracklistings so predictable that it's almost as if a computer put them together. So who compiles these things? I'd suggest that in both cases it's a question of using what you have on the shelf (hence EMI including Coldplay's Clocks) but also it looks like these brands have been going for years and are subscribing to the Ain't Broke philosophy - rather like the annual appearance of the Best Xmas Album Ever and why you no longer find Jona Lewie in the kitchen at Christmas parties but gleefully rubbing his hands together at the bank. Perhaps you'll always find him in the kitchen at Barclays. On Father's Day you don't get Stop The Cavalry but you do invariably get Alright Now.

Every year these brands get rolled out and back in 2006 - Sony had a go with World's Best Dad - opening track? Van Halen's Jump - but relax, later on you do get a dose of Alright Now. There will be a few changes to the brand to keep the thing up to date, for example on this year's Dad Rocks! Pink Floyd's Money has been replaced by Razorlight's America - surely giving father a kick in the bollocks would have been cheaper? But do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Despite the fact that I think I make a pretty mean compilation - or mixtape, as the kids now call burned CDs - I've never really been in the compilation game professionally. The closest I came was when the Head of Marketing at RCA asked me to put together a tracklist for a compilation of Irish and Scottish pop he wanted to do - you know the sort of thing - Van Morrison, The Proclaimers, The Saw Doctors, Clannad, etc. I leaped into action and immediately produced what I thought would be a good tracklisting. Then the research came back on what the title was going to be - Celtic Heart. My own heart sank. It's a title that reeks of marketing meeting, focus group and flip chart. But, it must be said, it would appear that this title has stood the test of time as it still appears to be available on Amazon and has at least two imitators which have stolen its title.

It might of course be my cunning and timeless tracklisting which has resulted in the continued availability of Celtic Heart- I mean, who can argue with the genius of kicking it off with Deacon Blue? Christ, what was I thinking? Still, at least I sneaked in Brian Kennedy who at that point had been dropped by the very label I was working for. Turned out that the exec who was masterminding Celtic Heart was unaware of Kennedy and liked the track so much he ended up resigning him to the label. Kennedy still didn't end up selling many records but he was a worthwhile artist who was given a deserved break. Those of you who've been paying attention will remember that the exact same thing happened to a band I signed, Club St Louis who got dropped by Warners label East West (a label they re-christened Least Best) and then re-signed as Honky to the Warners label over the road WEA.

But I'm digressing from compilations. I really don't mean to be down on them. Some of the best records are the ones that mash together a load of stuff you wouldn't think of putting together yourself. There are two reasons why compilation can work, one is where in amongst a quagmire of unlistenable bollocks you find a gem you've never heard of which immediately rises to the top of all your playlists. Examples of this for me are hearing Quincy Jones' sexed up version of Loving Spoonful's Summer In the City on the first of the three quite superb Blaxploitation CDs that BMG put out in the 90s, Stan Getz's bonkers I'm Late, I'm Late on frequently hard-to-like The Verve Album and Roger Eno outdoing his brother with Winter Music on an All Saints Records compilation I bought at SXSW. More recently, I was reviewing a compilation for Word Magazine called Destroy That Boy - More Girls With Guitars and in amongst the enjoyable if predictable collection of 60s girl bands was a track called Hold On by Sharon Tandy, which makes Janis Joplin sound like Sandi Thom and is a guaranteed air-punching winner. You never know where

The other, perhaps more valid, reason for compilations is when they work as bona fide albums; where the tracklisting works in a way that artist albums are supposed to. I'm not going to list my favourites because they are probably the same as yours but I'd argue that by far and away the compilations that work best are reggae and ska ones.

Reasons for this are twofold, firstly, many of the artists contained on these compilations were singles artists who made one or two definitive tracks which are great and secondly reggae and ska are so stripped down and muscular that disparate artists can sit alongside one another without jarring. Oh, and of course, the quality level is invariably high. I've lost count of the number of great reggae, ska and dub compilations I own or my good friend and reggae 7" collector Russell has bootlegged me, but it's certainly more than any other genre. Sometimes I yearn for more artist-based ska and reggae albums but then you have to remember than a lot of the time it's the same band I'm listening to - the Skatalites, the Soul Brothers, the Soul Vendors - they're playing on most of the great ska records of the 60s, either under their own name(s) or backing everyone from the Wailers to Desmond Dekker as well as ending up being manipulated by Lee Perry et al later in the 70s when dub came in. Those guys, Tommy McCook and Roland Alphonso on tenor sax, Don Drummond on trombone, Lester Sterling on alto sax, Lloyd Brevett on bass, Lloyd Knibbs on drums, Jackie Mittoo on piano, Jerry Hines on guitar and John 'Dizzy' Moore on trumpet, deserve the same respect afforded to the usual Mojo and Uncut suspects. Indeed, if anyone is looking for a good story like Nick Moran has just produced about Joe Meek, they need look no further than Don Drummond, the trombonist who was the creative force behind many of the Skatalites tunes, a schizophrenic who was locked up for murder and was then found dead in his cell amidst rumours of gangland revenge.

I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know already but if for some reason you aren't a huge fan of this sort of music or you haven't got to it yet then I have two compilation tips for you. Firstly Jazz in Jamaica, a compilation of great good time ska instrumentals including Roland Alphonso's mind blowingly wonderful Yard Broom. For some reason it seems to be deleted but you can still get it secondhand - or from me if you ask nicely. And secondly Studio One's Dub Specialist which is packed with lots of the same ska recordings but put through the dub blender and rendered otherworldly yet still warm and melodic. Again it's deleted - clearly Celtic Heart fans aren't particularly moved by it.

Judging from this week's compilation charts, it would appear that Celtic Heart fans have been persuaded to get into ska but only on the terms laid down in 1980 by Jerry Dammers. Ska Mania is currently at number 3 in the charts, sandwiched between Dad Rocks and Dad's Jukebox - it's not a bad compilation, a nice mixture of Two Tone and original Trojan artists, and it's a much better paternal experience than anything with the D word in its title.

I was going to leave it there for this week but I want to leave you with one final piece of compilation advice - if you are tempted to buy Common People - The Brit Pop Story, make sure you go in with a firmly held remote control - or rip the tracks you want - because I can only assume that whoever compiled it was deaf. Or mad. A three CD set that starts with the criminally overrated Auteurs then, after the brief respite of Elastica, sucker punches you with Gene. Relax, it gets worse. CD1 particularly is insane - Dubstar are are loggerheads with Black Grape who precede Stephen Duffy - you couldn't make it up. By CD2 you are lulled into a false sense of security by Pulp's title track (but relegated to volume 2?), Supergrass' Alright and Sleeper's Inbetweener then before can say Parklife, you're hit with Echobelly, Northern Uproar and Powder. There is of course good stuff here and you know that the Britpop years in my opinion were healthy for British music but this compilation seems to have been put together with the meticulous hatred of a serial killer - someone who wants to bury the genre for good. Come out and show yourself, whoever you are!

"I want to be rich and I want lots of money ..."

Tell you what. An admission - for which I don't stand to gain anything other than ridicule - I haven't heard the current albums by:

The Killers
Razorlight
Kaiser Chiefs
Franz Ferdinand
Lilly Allen
Lady Gaga
White Lies
Anthony & The Johnsons
And this week's number one - the new Bruce Springsteen album

Now, maybe you haven't either, and perhaps you'd consider the quest to hear all new releases in the rock or indie genre a bit on the sad or obsessive side. But I take pride in having my own opinion about current releases, so I don't go around repeating accepted truths about the new Snow Patrol album being a bit dull. For now I'm going to estimate my opinion of these albums (rather like the Tax Office asks you, if you're self-employed, how much you expect to earn), I'll let you know at the end.

Normally I do try to buy new albums - as I documented a couple of weeks ago, I think I bought more music last year than ever before. But also, where I can, I take advantage of knowing some nice people in record companies who will occasionally slip me a promo copy. This year, however, I seem to have lost my mojo. Some of you reading this will be familiar with the Blagger's Shuffle - that distinctive linger by the record company's stock cupboard in the hope of someone from the press office finding the key- or these days the digital version thereof, involving an email starting with the line - "Hi ____, how are things?" before brutally cutting to the chase: "I hear the new album from ______ is really good - do you have a spare copy you could send me?"

I'm generally quite good at this, largely because I slip the odd request into what I hope is a much deeper and more profound relationship with my friends with record company jobs. But I have to admit that in the distant past when I worked at Warners and RCA, I was guilty of having relationships with people at other record companies based solely on their ability to furnish me with new releases. This was fine as I represented exactly the same thing to them. Now I have nothing to offer in return other than my scintillating company.

Now I write about music in other places apart from here, I have started getting the occasional thing in the post, which is lovely - I made a point of phoning Genesis' PR when I did that Phil Collins piece on Radio 4 and they sent me the fantastic box set. Hooray for them.

But as that above list testifies to, I've just not had the pluck to ask people for these releases. And why haven't I bought them? OK, OK, OK - I admit, I don't like buying albums I suspect I won't like on the off chance. I know I'll probably like the Lady Gaga, Lilly Allen and Franz albums so they are on my list, but I can't bring myself to buy Razorlight's latest despite wanting to hear it. Stupid? Or prudent?

And before you start accusing me of Limewire ignorance or that I could have checked out a number of these albums on Myspace streamed exclusives - can I point out that I am a father of two? I can't find the web hours to devote to trawling for online exclusives. OK, so I have just started using Spotify which, along with the Onion's updates on Twitter, is my new favourite thing.

And that's probably why I have single-handedly failed to hear these all-important new albums - like the rest of us, I'm spending all of my waking hours trying to make a living.

But here's a thought about time and money: on Monday - the day it snowed in Britain more than it's snowed for 18 years - an interesting report was published. The report concluded that our 'aggressive pursuit of personal success' is apparently now the greatest threat to British children. Now, I haven't read the report and by all accounts a lot of it is idealistic and/or stating the bleedin' obvious, but isn't it ironic that on the same day as it came out, all the schools closed due to the weather. And all those otherwise selfish parents were forced to spend time with their and children making snowmen, tobogganing and having fun. Did you notice how everyone just dropped their important things - largely courtesy of the UK transport network throwing a wobbly and refusing to take them to work - and for a day, and in some cases two days, the rat race was forgotten and snowball fighting was aggressively pursued. Incidentally did you know that it was Groundhog Day on Monday too?

Actually, if I'm totally honest, on Monday, my daughter went and made snowmen with her friends over the road and I stayed at home and aggressively pursued some people to give me writing jobs. Frankly, my time would have been better spent making snowmen with Maddy. Or having another bash at getting my hands on the Lady Gaga album.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Oh yes, here's my Musebin- style one line reviews of what I expect to think of those albums:

The Killers - a pleasure while its on only to quickly slip into the background, never to be played again. Incidentally, remember glam rock bands in the 70s like The Sweet who had one very androgynous member who looked good in tinfoil whilst the three other fellas posed like reluctant builders in drag? Hmm ...

Razorlight - I honestly really liked the debut album by this lot but the memory of the cheap-suited businessman sitting opposite me on a train to Leeds listening to the last Razorlight album on his laptop, haunts me to this day.

Kaiser Chiefs - I liked approximately 5 seconds of last year's single Never Miss A Beat- the bit about wanting crisps for tea.

Franz Ferdinand - this will be another FF album and I can't wait. Actually, I can wait can't I? And I still am.

Lilly Allen - the single is magnetic. Almost as good as Foundations by Kate Nash. One of those records that you love regardless of who it is but because it's her, it's even better. A pop star to be cherished. If only her dad her suggested signing her when I ran his label.

Lady Gaga - I suspect I will enjoy this like the aforementioned Killers album.

White Lies - the bits I have enjoyed are ones reminiscent of other bands. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Or just a sign that I am old?

Anthony & The Johnsons - Like music fans everywhere I will be concentrating hard on liking this whilst secretly hankering after a few more tunes.

The new Bruce Springsteen album - the expression 'a safe pair of hands' springs to mind.

"See her picture in a thousand places, cos she's this year's girl..."

So the White Lies album is released this week. Relax, I'm not going to fall into the trap of giving it a review here. Besides, I haven't listened to yet. But those of you who've been reading this for a while will already know my thoughts on their live show and what I thought of Fear of Flying, so I won't repeat myself. Besides, you are probably sick to the teeth of reading about them on those New Bands For 2009 lists where people described as 'industry movers and shakers' (IMSs) pick their tips for the forthcoming year.

I mention White Lies because in another week of industry changes (Apple dropping its DRM, the Astoria closing, my local Asda no longer selling CDs), it's nice to cling on to good old fashioned highly-anticipated albums.

I was out with one of those IMSs last week. Tellingly, we actually went to the London Art Fair instead of seeing a band. It was fantastic, by the way, particulary the amount of Terry Frost stuff which, if I had a spare £20K, I would sooner invest in than a bank.

Afterwards over a bowl of noodles, the IMS lamented the lack of anything genuinely exciting out there. Now, this may sound like the usual jaded A&R whinge of cliche. Not so. Well, not so with this chap anyway, he's normally ludicrously positive about everything - there's generally a silver lining for him, even in acts which I can't imagine getting beyond their first single. With him, they get to the album and more often than not end up on the cover of NME. Sometimes they even sell loads of records. Not that I'm jealous of him or anything, you understand.

He actually has a lot of time for White Lies but beyond that - looking at the landscape of unsigned and newly-signed artists - he claimed that there really wasn't anything sure-fire exciting out there in the way that there is most Januarys.

But from all those IMS lists you wouldn't think that there was a dearth of new stuff, would you? How many times have you read the names Little Boots, Empire of the Sun, Florence And the Machine and La Roux? They were all present and correct on BBC's Sound of 2009 list, a list which has become such an institution since it tipped Duffy and Adele that news of Little Boots' top nomination ended up making the national TV news. They were also there in the Guardian, The Times, the NME and then were repeated ad infinitum down the chain of lesser titles who always follow suit with their 'picks'. I remember when I was an editor at AOL Music and we did our inevitable image gallery of annual music tips. Despite my loathing of many of the choices, like a coward I would always include tips from other media's lists because I didn't want to be seen missing anything. Remember when you couldn't move for accolades for The Bravery or Holly Valance? Incidentally, you really should click on that Bravery link and read it, then read this year's BBC tips - it will make you smile and nod sagely.

In yesterday's Observer Music Monthly list, there had clearly been an effort to swerve away from some of the more obvious choices and well done them for trying. The interesting thing about all the tipping this year is that with the record business in freefall, there is less and less chance of any of these tipped bands actually amounting to very much more than hot tips. Both Duffy and Adele were heavily invested in - certainly Duffy had to happen, the financial consequences would have just been too dreadful to contemplate if it hadn't worked. If the tipster's goal of 'getting it right' of being able to say at the beginning of the following year,"Yeah, we spotted Duffy ages ago" then the safest bet is to tip the artist who you know the record company is backing. Yes, that's why we all backed The Bravery in 2004.

Press expectation and the marketing budgets for White Lies are of a level that we now see less and less of; there simply isn't enough cash to do it on every new act. So aside from their Joy Division-meets-Duran Duran sound, there is something heart-warmingly old-fashioned about the whole White Lies vehicle, with its press ubiquity, its TV advertising and universal approval. That's with a small 'u' by the way. Even reviews where quite clearly the critic does not get it have been positive. Let's be honest, it is noveau goth music of the sort that teeenage boys can't get enough of; it's not made for 30-something critics who would rather be listening to Bon Iver (there, got a reference in this week, high five!). So critics have to judge it whilst wearing short trousers to avoid sounding dad-like.

In a similar way, I reviewed Graham Norton's debut in La Cage Aux Folles last night - except instead of short trousers, I had to review it in drag. I don't find camp funny of itself and most of the humour in La Cage is derived out of the assumption that men in glittery dresses and wigs is hilarious. But once I got into the spirit - and Norton, despite a limited vocal range, does a fairly good job - I found myself humming along to I Am What I Am along with the middle aged ladies and male couples sharing M&Ms.

Damn, this week, I wanted to go through the critics' picks of acts for 2009 and give you my informed and unbiased opinion on all of them. Instead, I've told you I like Sir Terry Frost and caberet. But would you really be interested to know what I think of Little Boots? Perhaps if I'd seen her live I would tell you but you don't need me to tell you what I think of her recordings - go and listen yourself. My one thought on her is this - and it probably applies to all the other lucky tipped artists too: in her Guardian Magazine feature two weeks ago, the interview ended with the usual bold copy where tradtionally, information pertaining to the release date of her record would be. But instead of these details it merely stated that we could hear her music on Myspace. Let's hope Atlantic are saving up a White Lies-sized budget for her campaign.

"Oh, I bet you wonder how I knew..."

Ah, Motown. Fifty years ago. And doesn't it feel like it? It was a label made on singles and truly we are in a place where no such label could exist today - I mean, who makes money out of singles? Where do you buy singles? Frankly, where do you buy music?

I went to Zavvi last Friday, tempted like thousands of other vultures by the announcement of the closure of 22 of its shops. There were of course no real bargains to be had; 20% off a full price album in a world where no one dreams of paying more than £8 a CD, is hardly boomtime. So what next for those of us who still enjoy buying music?

I went through my accounts over the weekend and discovered I'd bought more music last year than ever before, admittedly of a back catalogue nature. This was largely due to the fact that it all appears to be £5. So albums I'd always been curious about but had seemed too much of a punt at £15, were now worth grabbing. I didn't have too many disappointments either (apart from perhaps The Pop Group). And despite the trips to Fopp that I have written about here before, where did I pick up my Soft Machine, Rich Kids, Supertramp, Peter Gabriel, DJ Shadow, Kevin Ayers, Rory Gallagher etc? You already know the answer. Must buy less this year. And that's why Zavvi has gone. And why Pinnacle has gone, EUK and Sister Ray. And who knows where HMV is going to end up.

Part of me is sad and wants to support the high street. As well as the reason above, I went into Zavvi on Friday because when I'm in Oxford Street I always go into The Megastore, it's been part of my life. I used to go when it was Virgin. My brother used to steal vinyl there regularly on Saturdays, which is how we discovered the complete Bob Dylan, Doors and David Bowie catalogues without any financial strain. And before that, when Virgin was over the other side in New Oxford Street (where Argos is now), we used to go to the really exciting Our Price just down from the Astoria (where Boots is now). That's where I bought Another Music In a Different Kitchen when I was 13 - my second punk album and my first ever solo trip up to "London" from Blackheath.

This year is also the 50th anniversary of Warner Brothers records, a celebration that I suspect will not have the same timbre as that of Motown. Having said that, I really do think we should give Berry Gordy's baby a rest for a moment - I mean, haven't we all heard Dancing In The Street, I Can't Help Myself and I Heard It Through The Grapevine etc enough for now?

Don't get me wrong, I love Motown as much as the next man - not more than him, just as much as that next man - but I could do with a break from my life being 'soundtracked' by it. It was a friend of mine who suggested what I think it is a brilliant idea: a Motown Amnesty. He suggested this last year but it would work perfectly in 2009 to mark the anniversary. Basically, what should happen is this: the ban of all Motown singles from being played in public places like for example Starbucks, shoe shops, hold music, lift musak, supermarkets. We would allow album tracks, B sides and obscurities, the ban is limited to the songs that that have been sullied by overplay. The ones that our lives are being forcibly 'soundtracked' by. If we kept this ban up for a year, then we could return to Motown in 2010 with our ears refreshed and enjoy these brilliant recordings once again. Surely that's a better way to celebrate this wonderful music than using it to accompany commerce?

Incidentally, don't you hate that expression 'the soundtrack of my life'? Since we moved into the iPod shuffle age it's become one of the great cliches' of our time. I love giving myself private musical treats on the Pod as I'm walking to the shops, or doing the washing up but 'soundtracking my life'? Come on! That's just adding to the cult of self-glorification (OK, I freely admit that writing a blog is part of this cult too). Is listening to How Soon Is Now? when you reverse your car into a bollard going to sweeten that memory? Will you look back on Smells Like Teen Spirit as the song that you listened whilst watching your socks dry? Will Wonderwall be the song that you lovingly remember buying vegetables to?

Talking of soundtracks to my life, when we arrived back from the US we were greeted with two bits of bad news, firstly the situation in Gaza, about which I have nothing to say other than that it might be useful to reflect on it or indeed any localised violent feud currently happening (hello Ukraine and Russia) when we are whinging about our economy, getting parking tickets, the price of a pint of lager etc. The other bit of bad news, which I'm ashamed to say I felt more keenly was the death of Harold Pinter on Christmas Eve. Joe Strummer died while we were in Virginia at Christmas 2002 - the good ones always go at Christmas. James Brown went on the 25th two years ago. I can't really say I have heroes but I think Pinter and Strummer came pretty close.

Because my dad wrote about theatre, I was lucky enough to meet Pinter a few years ago. We went to a screening of the 1963 film of The Caretaker at the Barbican in honour of the man himself, who was by then suffering from the cancer which eventually took him. After the screening, there was a small reception for friends and acquaintances in one of the function rooms, so my dad and I duly got into the lift to the floor we thought it was on. When we got out, no sign of anybody - just an empty room. Silence. We got back back into the lift and took it to the next floor up. This time, we found a floor full of people but all of them dining in the restaurant, blissfully unaware of the presence in the building of Britain's greatest living playwright.

In the end we found the reception on another floor in another room - it really is all about rooms with Pinter isn't it? Dad, who used to be relatively chummy with Pinter in the 60s, introduced me and I shook the great man's reassuringly large hand - it was slightly cold and the shake was loose. I think, in a feeble attempt for him to like and remember me, I told him I lived near Thistlethwaite Road, the road where he grew up in Clapton. He muttered something about it and, I think, Michael Billington piped in with some useful biographical background - clearly the Guardian's theatre critic knows more about HP than the man knew himself.

By the way, if you are daunted by Pinter and find the cliche of his plays being full of boring, confusing pauses and silences off-putting, I would recommend you see 1973 film of Peter Hall's production of The Homecoming. It's as funny, frightening and frankly confusing as all of Pinter's best stuff, but has enough semblance of conventional drama to keep you transfixed. I saw it in November 1982, the week that Channel 4 launched and it was as revelatory as hearing Anarchy In the UK or kissing a girl. It also helped that we never had Pinter as an A Level set text so reading his entire works felt rebellious and exciting. Another thing about Pinter is his swearing - like the Derek and Clive sketch ("a prick in Pinter's hands is pure gold") he has a knack of a well-placed expletive that has only recently been equalled by The Thick of It. No one else could have come up with the insult "Minge juice bottler".

So, Motown and Pinter - two institutions that we'll probably never see the like of again. I've got another Pinter anecdote which I'll tell you another time but right now I've got to grab Esther and find out what's happening with the Wattingers and the Pontipines.

Are you gay?

For once I'm not going to throw you in at the deep end at the start of this. I could - it would be easy. I could describe myself walking through Clapton at four in the morning in white jeans with a handlebar moustache, whilst gurning East London revellers look on disgustedly and contemplate the best way to duff me up. But no, that would be too easy. I want to tell you the story from the beginning.

I'm not much of a fan of fancy dress. And if they were honest I think most people apart from possibly Jonathan Ross would say that - all the effort, the expense and the looking like a twat for several hours. Where in fact is the upside? So when one of my oldest friends announced he was celebrating his 10 year wedding anniversary with a FD party, my heart sank. Michael and Jo whose party it was, are music industry movers and shakers, Jo, whilst being a mother of two girls older than my own, manages to hold down a senior legal position at a major publisher and Michael, well, he's the daddy in many ways - a record company MD and a consummate arbiter of taste - someone who finds time to visit the Richard Prince exhibition at the Serpentine, do a pencil sketch of whoever he's sitting opposite as well as know the crucial difference between between signing Joe Jean & the Jing Jang Jong and The Ting Tings. He's come on a long way from the days when he would eat my cheese from the shared fridge in our poky flat.

The party was being co-hosted by another friend (a successful band manager, as it goes), who, Michael claimed to me, was the one who had suggested making it fancy dress. "Mate, it wasn't my idea!" Hmm ... I'm not so sure; Michael has always liked dressing up - even at Manchester University where we met, he would frequently emerge from his room in Owens Park dressed like a Russian military officer. Although, come to think of it, it was the 80s; most people dressed like that back then.

The theme of the party was "Music and Movie Stars." Even worse! I mean, if it had been tarts and vicars or school uniform there would have been some sort of democracy at work - we all would have had the upside of being someone else for the night but there wouldn't have been the status thing at play. Without doubt it's the status thing that is the real evil of FD parties. People are immediately split into two camps: those who can afford to splash out and get a costume that makes them look exactly like who they want to be and the rest of us, who have to improvise, and inevitably end up spending the evening getting the question: "So who are you supposed to be?"

And despite this being a genuine private party, because of the status of the hosts and their perceived power and influence in the music biz, I heard several people openly planning to schmooze - "oh it'll be a great opportunity, everyone will be there... " or "you know frankly, I could do with a night in but I think it'll be good for business if I'm seen there so I'm going" Urgh! Awful. I had no intention of treating it as an extension of the music industry calendar - South By South West, Glastonbury, Michael's Fancy Dress Party, Reading, In The City ... I just wanted to see Michael and a load of our mutual friends who would be coming. But would they be coming in fancy dress?

I asked our mate Andy if he was going in FD. "Do I look like a complete c**t?" was his reply. I shouldn't have expected anything less. Others seemed unsure. Most of them, given the current belt-tightening world we're living in, were stressed out by the idea of costume hire. Some, for whom time is more pressing than money, were annoyed at the hours that had to be spent in thinking of who to go as "How much spare time does he think we've got?" As the day loomed, I became increasingly stressed. I had no idea who to go as and all the suggestions and ideas seemed to involve wigs - I imagine this must happen a lot to bald men before FD parties - "How about going as Ozzy or Robert Plant? What about Alice Cooper?"I didn't want to spend a fragrant August evening sweating under nylon heavy metal hair. "What about going as Britney when she shaved all her hair off?" suggested my friend Alex. Cheers.

"What about putting a plastic whale around you and going as Moby?"
This was the suggestion from my hairdresser mate, David, as he gave me a trim on the Friday afternoon. In many ways it was the final straw - at this point I knew that no one was going to help me come up with an idea - I was on my own. I exited his salon and wandered over to Fopp to cheer myself up. Of course, my visits to Fopp, as I've described before, always have the dual effect of cheering me up when I find an album I want for £5 or less, but depressing the hell out of me that the record industry is dying and everything is being flogged off. This time though, I realised that just over the road from Fopp is Angels, the fancy dress hire place.

I went in, mainly to wallow in my own lack of money and ideas. The professional costume hire section had just closed for the week so I went upstairs to the fancy dress shop. This is the runt end of Angels, more of a glorified joke shop compared to the costume hire business which supplies the film and TV world. I flicked through a book of costumes which were all trying to ape famous film roles without incurring a copyright fee (samples include an Austin Powers one called 'Groovy', a yellow Ali G one called 'B-Boy' and a muzzle hat Hannibal Lector one called 'Schizo', which I'm sure Rethink would have something to say about) None of them cost less than £50. Bollocks to it, I thought, I've got a Beatles wig at home left over from an old FD party I went to when I worked at AOL, I'll be George again.

But just I was about to go back downstairs and drown my sorrows in Fopp, I saw it. Hang on, hang on... I could put that on and ...yes! It was perfect. And only £4.99. Brilliant!

It was called a 'Leather Look Biker's Hat with chain' and after I found it, things snowballed. I found a set of 'Vicar's teeth' for £1.50 in a shop in Chingford, a string vest and a studded bracelet and a black kohl pencil in Walthamstow market each costing £2 - everything costs two quid here, aside from bananas which are, of course, "a pairned a bowl!" Upstairs in my cupboard I found a pair of white Levis with a 30inch waist but miraculously I could still get into. In fact, their being so tight only added to the effect. I completed the costume, then went round to our next door neighbours to see what they thought. "Christ, Ben, you're going to pull in that," said Mandy. I think she was taking the piss. "Daddy, you look silly," said Maddy. Goal!

I wasn't going to travel on public transport in costume so I brought my kohl pencil with me. And in a pub in Borough, having lent my friend Saul the Beatles wig and helped Alex put on her Mick Hucknell outfit, I went to the Gents. Ignoring the smell of wee and the constant man traffic going past me, I balanced a copy of the sleeve of their Greatest Hits on the sink and using my kohl pencil applied my big moustache. Finally I emerged, out of the closet as it were, as Sir Freddie of Mercury!

As we crossed the plank to the boat where the party was taking place, I realised that the appeal of FD parties is that once you've got over the psychological hurdle of being someone else and accepting that you're there to be laughed at, it's brilliant. All the curmudgeonly stuff I mentioned earlier about status and expense and stress went overboard as I strutted my stuff as Freddie. At the party we bumped into the cast of Gone With The Wind, various Marilyns, an Amy Winehouse, David Bowie, someone who had painted their whole head blue like Iggle Piggle who turned out to be a member of Franz Ferdinand, and a balding man who had simply put blue make up over his eyes Stipe-style. I had had and dismissed this idea and I felt rather smug mincing past him with my 'tache and leather cap. Michael and Jo looked amazing as Anthony & Cleopatra - it was clear that Michael had harboured desires to get with a breastplate and plumage for a while, as it was a look he seemed suspiciously comfortable with. Something people were beginning to say about me too. "Ben," said my friend Emma, who was one quarter of Abba, "you look disgusting!" I took this as a compliment. Charlie from our management company was part of the Abba line-up but he'd forgotten to do the beard "I could be anybody'" he moaned, "I could be Kenny Loggins..." Saul, in the Beatles wig got bizarrely mistaken for Elton John and my press guy Steve, was wearing full Luftwaffe gear. Well, someone had to. Everyone wondered why Alex, who works for Mick Hucknell, had dressed as him. True to form, my friend Andy came as himself - a cynical press officer. "I always knew you'd bottle it and come in fancy dress." he told me at the bar. There were quite a few folk who hadn't bothered dressing up, and I realised that the main reason I had was so I wouldn't stand out. Having said that, I seem to recall being on the dancefloor most of the night, throwing shapes in character. So much for blending in.

I bumped into Alex James, who I hadn't seen since I worked for him - since then he's became a dad, a writer, a media darling and cheese whore so it was kind of fitting that our reunion of sorts had him dressed relatively normally (he claimed to have come as Sebastian Flyte from Brideshead Revisted - plus ca change) and me as gay as the 1890s. At Michael's wedding where I had been best man, Alex and I had come back to Clerkenwell where Michael lived at the time, blagged the last of his wedding champagne, gone to Turnmills and danced with our tops off until it closed. Now I was drunk, but he was sober. We chatted, while that I fumbled about for 10 minutes trying to store his number on my mobile. By the time I had managed it he'd gone back to the country.

Eventually it was time to go home. I think I may have been last to leave, such a good time I'd been having. For some reason, possibly financially motivated as I had spent all of my float behind the 'free' bar, I decided to get a nightbus back to Walthamstow. I sat inconspicuously on the bottom deck, with my leather-look cap safely hidden in my bag and a cleverly prepared blue jumper covering my string vest. It was only when I caught sight of the handlebar mustachioed queen in the window that I realised I wasn't quite blending in as planned.

The bus, of course, was going nowhere near E17 and I got turfed off outside Homerton Hospital in Hackney. I stood at the bus stop hiccuping whilst trying to the read three timetables simultaneously (I think there may have only been one). Suddenly, I heard an accented voice in my right ear: "Are you drunk?" I turned round and tried to focus on the well-dressed Pakistani man standing there. I smiled apologetically," Ishit that obvioush?" He smiled back. Then a pause. "Are you gay?" I don't remember feeling particularly alarmed at this point. Mind you, if the cast of Lord of The Rings had emerged out of Homerton's A&E doors I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. "No, sorry, mate, I'm in fanshee dress..." As quick as you like, he turned on his heel and departed round the corner. Oh well. I started walking to where I knew I could get a bus back - unfortunately I had to go through one of London's most dangerous quarter's, Clapton. I made it though, always keeping the beacon of Thistlethwaite Road as a talisman: bang in the middle of all the scary nightclubs and dangerous kebaberies and just up from Clapton Pond is the road where Harold Pinter grew up.

At the top of Lee Bridge Road, I stopped and waited. It didn't take long for the bus to come. I thought about the well dressed man outside the last bus stop. I felt a bit sorry for him, he was so polite and everything. I hope he found someone in the end. Mandy's prediction was right, though, the costume got me propositioned - and who could ask for more on a Saturday night?

You can get out anytime you want, but you can never leave

A friend of mine just ran into Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle of The Buzzcocks outside his local pub off the Camden Road. "Hello guys, " he said - he's quite forward, my friend, he's a hairdresser and hugely adept at making people feel at ease, even when, like me, they don't have a lot of hair to cut, "Hello guys," he said,"just wanted to say that I've always been a big fan of your stuff, ever since I saw you at Eric's in Liverpool in 1977..."

Diggle looked at him and supped his pint,"Thanks mate," he said, then he gestured over to Shelley who was in conversation with someone else; he shook his head disbelievingly and slightly regretfully, "thirty two fucking years..."

We've all been at it years though haven't we? Well, I have. And it's funny, after a while it feels like I've been in it as long as people I used to look up to or buy records by. I just had another meeting with the 80s pop star and he just seemed the same age as me. Possibly younger. And yesterday I had a meeting with the guy who was my first boss. He's been in the music business, he said "for over 20 years..." Actually, I felt like saying to him - it's me that's been in it for about 20 years (20 years this autumn to be precise) you, sir, have been in it almost 30. But there he is still looking like I remember him 20 years before, a few more 'laughter lines' (on second thoughts, to paraphrase George Melly's remark to Mick Jagger, nothing's that funny) but he's looks young. Younger than me, I'd wager. And he's sitting in an office surrounded by tight-trousered boys and girls, a man in his fifth decade, still wearing Converse and having an opinion about Foals and Jo Lean And The Jing Jang Jong. Which is what you do in the music business - what else are you going to do?

I say this because I've always thought this way: what else am I going to do? What do musicians do who used to be in bands who have to go off and do something else? Well, increasingly, they reform the same bands and go off and make more money than they made first time round by carefully planned nostalgia shows - whether you're Shed Seven or The Love Affair, you can be your own tribute band at the drop of a hat these days and no one cares how old you are. In fact it's probably reassuring for the stooping, bespectacled audience to see how ancient everyone is on stage while the music makes them feel young again. When the Sex Pistols reformed in the mid-nineties, there was a purists' outcry at the terrible sacrilege and you know what? that Finsbury Park show was fucking amazing - it was, and you can tell I really mean it man, because I'm using a swear word. After Lydon came on and announced, "Fat, Forty and Back!" the context was set, every song was played pitch perfect and it was hugely entertaining. Alan McGee agreed, I remember, and published a full page NME advert declaring how great it was to gainsay the critical consensus. At the time I was running Indolent - a much smaller operation than Creation - and we published a quarter page ad saying how we felt the same way but didn't have as much cash as McGee.

The point is that now, no one cares and indeed, the Pistols are considered one of the more reliable nights out in a growing genre. Soon, we'll have bands performing the work of the greats with no attendant tribute-band irony - it's already happening with Ron Geesin having performed the Atom Heart Mother suite a couple of weeks ago and joined onstage by Dave Gilmour. My prediction is that pop records will become like classical pieces and be performed in various ways either in musicals with Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan upping the ante or increasingly in much more highbrow productions, involving new musicians interpreting them .

But what else do ex-music business people do if they give it up altogether? Of course, if they've earned a lot of money then clearly they don't have to do anything - they can go the way of the Ridgely, who must be the luckiest man in pop - a parting gift from George of half the publishing on his best song and bingo, he can surf the rest of his life or John Deacon, who lives in Putney, enjoys a round of golf, and is the proud owner of 65 million pounds. But the rest of them... us, what do we do? Here are some examples from the past:

Press PR person - Opened a cattery in Cornwall.
Record Producer - Took a new media job and never again produced a record by Bryan Ferry
A&R man - Signed James then did a joinery degree and became a carpenter
A&R woman - Left after signing the Charlatans and studied psychology
Guitarist of Haircut 100 - Became a tree surgeon
Founder of Deceptive Records - Became a secondary school teacher
Guitarist of Echobelly - Got a job in second hand record shop (OK, so she stayed in the music business...)

But you know what, writing that list took a while - and I had help. There must be loads more ex-music industry folk who jumped ship but most of them, well, they're still there as far as I know. I left music and worked for six years in new media, but on my return, I was astonished at how little had changed - I mean, the same producer managers, the same studio managers, the same mastering engineers, and so many of the same faces in publishing and record companies, albeit many of those faces jowlier and more florid. Despite the massive changes brought about by the Internet nothing, it seemed, had changed - indeed, the top studios were still charging the same daily rate that they had been charging in the mid-90s. But strangely enough, within a few months of my return, quite possibly because of my return, things began to unravel. First, the singles chart started accepting downloads without a physical format which recognised how little meaning was left in it. Then as if to concur with this, Top Of The Pops got axed, after which the legendary Townhouse Studios closed down, followed by a whole load of residential studios (including the fantastic Jacobs in Farnham) Even Eden, where I managed to record some of the second Rakes album, closed down shortly after I used it. I found this particularly sad as my favourite album of all time was recorded there. Tales of Bay City Rollers fans camping outside in the 70s will make a nice story for whichever property developer turns it into luxury flats.

Eventually, as we all know, the very record company where I was working became a victim too and everyone was made redundant. I recently went to a reunion of sorts and many of the old V2 staff were there. I didn't do an actual straw poll of which of them was still working in music but I'm fairly sure most of them are. Unless their Facebooks are fiction, they've all gone on to work in what remains of the record industry - Domino, XL, Universal, SonyBMG... So still nothing really has changed. And maybe nothing will. Just like the Buzzcocks still going steady, in twenty more years we'll all be supping pints, raising our eyebrows and shaking our heads in disbelief at where all the time went.

Inside the record company cauldron...

"We'll know tomorrow. They're reducing all the EMI A&R teams..."

On Wednesday, a friend of mine from EMI and I sit outside in dappled Kensington sunlight eating cake on a bench in the park behind the church. It's an idyllic scene - and the cakes are unbelievable, mine a chocolate one oozing with Bailey's cream - but the conversation is shot through with dread. My friend will be OK, we think, but there will be more people out of work and those that are left will be multi-tasking and cutting corners.

Just before this, I had a cup of tea with another pal who works over the road at Warners. Truly, Kensington High Street has become record company mile: with Sony BMG moving into the old Derry & Toms building above Marks and Spencers, the full major line will be complete with EMI/Virgin at one end, leading to the Universal Building (or Death Star, as it's widely known), then Sony BMG, then Atlantic in the Electric Lighting Station just past the old Kensington Market (now decimated into a branch of PC World). But left on the High St and a short walk up Church St, is the other Warners building, housing most of the old WEA group.

I drink tea with my Warners pal in his office, plastered with the artwork trophies of a successful music industry fella. He tells me how he used to be based at the Electric Lighting Station, working for Atlantic but has been moved to the Church St office to work for all of the labels. He rarely gets out of the building until 8pm. We were going to go out tonight but he needs a night in - and frankly who can blame him? He very generously gives me a pile of Warners CDs, we say goodbye and arrange to meet next week instead. As I walk out I look around the open plan office and sense something different... what is it? It dawns on me as I'm standing in the lift going down: there was no music playing.

If there is one thing that every record company office used to have in common, whether it was Creation or Interscope or Fierce Panda, it was that everyone who worked there loved music and was excited about the roster - there was a sense of possession over the artists that were currently being developed. Even artists who were not particularly popular with the staff were supported because everyone felt part of the team. It's a cliche but like all cliches, it's true: it wasn't a job, it was a lifestyle. I worked at East West (now rebranded Atlantic) in the 90s and the excitement over a new Simply Red album wasn't that the staff were that keen on hearing the Ginger Prince's new material (although some obviously were) but rather that it was going to sell in bucketloads and it's exciting selling records, being popular. Plus, there would be a party and and everyone would benefit in some way at the end of the year; we all felt a part of it, whether this was mistaken or not. The faces on the members of staff I passed on my way out today seemed disengaged and kind of, well, disappointed. They were all attractive, young people and had probably punched the air when they landed a job at a legendary place like Warners - many of them had probably got in via the Warners Graduate Trainee Scheme. Yes, Graduate Trainee Scheme: working at a record company is now just another career option, somewhere between accountancy and retail management. When I first got my job at Warners my mum had the classic "but when are you going to get a proper job?" reaction, and that was just how I wanted it. Working at a record company was something you did for the love of it, not for the career, not for any fiscal gain - it was an extension of your hobby.

My friend Andy who's worked at record company's longer than me, was looking to take on a junior member of staff a few years ago and had amassed a number of CVs from enthusiastic fanzine writers, club promoters and DJs. He took these to his HR department, who by return gave him a pile of CVs from candidates who had applied through the Graduate Trainee Scheme. These applicants were all finishing their degrees, possibly Media Studies, and were looking for their first job on the media career ladder. "But, what about taking on someone who is already out there doing it, someone with life skills, someone who may not have a degree but has a degree of swagger and originality?"
"We'll consider it, but we'd really rather you employed a graduate, Andy."
I can't remember what the outcome was, but it doesn't matter. The proof of who won the argument was in the faces on the graduates sitting in front of computers today. They were probably all thinking: "Wish I'd gone into the film industry, this is rubbish."

Next day I found myself back in Kensington seeing a friend at EMI Music Publishing. Unbelievably, they have finally moved from their old Tin Pan Alley headquarters on Charing Cross Road and shacked up with Terra Firma in EMI headquarters in Wrights Lane - adding further evidence that there really is only one remaining address for the music business. Frankly, I was amazed they let me through the door after the Guardian article, but soon I found myself sitting next to a 8 ft high replica of a Gibson Les Paul in the reception area. Say what you like about Guy Hands and co, they know how to do reception - all the latest magazines, a water cooler, comfy sofas in bright surroundings. In the Warner Building the day before, I sat in the cramped, murky reception with it's apologetically small plasma screen on the wall and picked through dog-eared copies of Billboard and Variety. Eventually I thought I had found something - a copy of the NME. It turned out to be from February. It was like being at the dentist.

Simon and I had lunch in EMI's canteen. Actually, to call it a canteen does it a disservice. It is a splendid place to have lunch. The other EMI Building at the Hammersmith end of the road has a canteen, which is much more like what you imagine: functional, a bit lived-in. Actually, if you ever find yourself having a snack in it - and let's be frank, who knows how much longer you'll have the opportunity - make sure you have a good look at the balustrade which runs along its upper level - it was taken from the old EMI building in Manchester Square and is the very one that four young lads from Merseyside leaned over on the cover of their first album.

The canteen in the Wrights Lane building is ultra modern; an open quadrangle or piazza between the interior sides of the glass tower, it offers three choices of lunch all at very reasonable prices. I'd happily have lunch here every day, but sooner or later Guy Hands would catch on, I'm sure.

Simon's office was like my friend's at Warners only it was virtually wallpapered in 7" single sleeves from the 70s, 80s and 90s. By way of explanation, he told me how he'd been charged with procuring singles for a jukebox that the company were going to present to Mr Hands as some sort of welcome gift. Each 7" single had to be a song or artist that had been number one for EMI publishing or records - Wuthering Heights, Summer Holiday, Country House etc.

He had scoured Record and Tape Exchange and Beanos (he got paid to do this! I would have done it for free - possibly even paid some cash upfront.) and noticing that some of the singles didn't have the big holes in the middle that you need to make them jukebox-compatible, discovered that Beanos have a hole-stamping machine especially for this, which they oiled-up for him. I don't know why this warms my heart me but it does.

Anyway, the singles were loaded onto the jukebox and the staff lined up to present their new leader with his trophy. Hands walked in, expressed gratitude and proceeded to randomly select a 7". It plopped onto the turntable and Terra Firma and EMI staff alike were greeted with the dulcet tones of Mick Hucknell's voice singing his well-known choice from EMI/Windswept Pacific's catalogue, Money's Too Tight (To Mention). The Ginger Prince strikes again.

Back on the park bench eating the cake with my other EMI A&R pal, I mention the Scottish Band to him and try to tell him how well they are doing. He smiles indulgently but I sense the same slightly wistful look that I saw on the graduates' faces at Warners. He cannot care about any new music until he knows there is a point to it, until he knows if he can out there again and get something signed and make a great record with them. Until he knows he still has a job.

And maybe that's how the whole record business feels right now - do they have jobs? Is there a business? Let's hope so, for the Sb's sake.

Have you read my bog?

"Everyone else had gone to Midem, there was nothing to do in the office so I had to resort to reading your blog."


I suspect I'll have to write the above sentence on a Post It note and have it stuck to my monitor as a lesson not to get too cocky. I overheard myself when I was out with a few record company people the other night and I noticed the word 'blog' pass my lips perhaps over-frequently. Bugger, I really wanted not to become one of the self-obsessed; the type I always thought bloggers were. In truth, I don't think I have, but sometimes when people with whom I have only passing acquaintance or don't know at all, come up to me and say they're 'loving the blog', it's hard not to snatch a moment of glory-basking.


Someone did this to me at the Notting Hill Arts Club the week before last and it caught me unawares. And thanked him and shortly after privately crowning myself King of All Things, I went over to chat to an old A&R colleague and former boss Mike. I told him about the blog, foolishly expecting him to say how much he was enjoying it too and what a massive inspiration to his life it was - "Your bog?" he asked, mock incredulous, "Have I read your bog?" In many ways of course he has a point. I am asking people, you, to go through my private business. Still, I have nothing to be ashamed of so, I'm not, as it were too cool for stool so I'll continue letting everyone go through my bins until such time as it appears there is nothing left of interest in there.

Interestingly though, there is actually a brilliant Web site (I know, I know - how dull is it to hear that sentence, but really this one is great) The site's called Derelictlondon and it's dedicated to the bits of London that are falling apart, i.e. most of it. On it there's a whole section which covers the capital's public loos. There you will find jpegs of the interior of just about every bog in town regardless of its hygiene level. Perhaps I should cut out the middle man and just put a webcam in my lav.


Mike, who made the incisive bog/blog comment, was at the Notting Hill Arts club along with a large collective noun of London's A&R fraternity to see Manchester act Kid British & The Action Manky. Whilst not as ludicrously stuffed to the gills with industry as the White Lies show earlier this year it was clearly a band with a large industry buzz. A friend of mine at Sony/BMG said the entire A&R department would have been there had they not all been out entertaining Rick Rubin - now there's a measure of someone's importance. The band themselves were a very commercial variation on the mixed race ska band theme - some singing, some toasting and rapping and lots of chorus. I thought they were great, I must admit, maybe a little cheesy at times - there's even a track which samples Our House (the Madness version not the Crosby Still Nash song), but if they can convince the po-faced tastemakers of the Dazed And Confused Drowned in Sound club and so in turn fill the blank page of Jo Wiley's taste then I think the kids will lap them up. Does that sound cynical? It wasn't meant to but I've read it back and it sounds like a very bitter person having a go at the media. I'm not really, but I suppose after being witness to the way things in the media work for the thousand odd years I have been, some things do seem to crop up again and again. I'm currently experiencing the sharp end of getting press and radio attention for the Scottish Band and this massive dosage of deja vu that comes each time I am involved with a record release always takes me by surprise. Below are my current Top Ten - feel free to post yours, I'm sure there are loads I've missed.


1) No matter how much you know it's all about luck and circumstance, you always believe press, radio and other promotions people: 'Look into my eyes... in a moment I will list some well-known music magazines/djs/clubs. I will post your promo in a Jiffy bag to these people. When you wake up you will remember nothing of this conversation other than having a general feeling of confidence and well-being and a desire to pay me a large monthly retainer. 3-2-1 you're back in the room."*

2) Despite everyone making sure that artwork, music, etc is delivered on time, the record release date will always go back two weeks.

3) Just before the tour starts, the van you hire/buy to get the band to shows will develop an inexplicable problem involving a technical term you don't understand that requires a minimum of £300 to solve.

4) You will get a surprise result at radio which makes everyone feel great but requires all the plans to be changed to work around the amazing result (usually Radio 1).

5) The result at radio turns out to be a flash in the pan and you are back to square one. Only with all the new plans to implement.

6) The band will be offered a choice support slot with a hip band of the moment (e.g the Teenagers, the Ting Tings etc ) but won't be able to play it because they are already booked to play 3rd on the bill in a tramp's toilet.

7) The producer of the record remembers that there is a sample on it that he forgot to mention, but which he hopes is ok to use. It's usually Baby Love by The Supremes or Dazed And Confused by Led Zeppelin (NB this mainly applies to dance or hip hop acts).

8) The record has a swear word on it you never knew about until the band give you the lyrics for MTV. You promptly spring to action and attempt a 'radio edit' using the instrumental of the track that the producer prepared in advance for such an eventuality.

9) The producer can't find the instrumental.

10) You do finally get the hallowed NME Radar feature. You carry the PR guy aloft, as he or she is showered with flower petals from adoring masses. When you finally see the feature, it turns out to be a savage put-down which effectively ends your relationship with the paper**

*Obviously, I exclude the press and promotions people we are currently using - they are all adorable.
**OK, so this one is mainly about Sleeper...

"Did you ever feel a strange vibration in here?"

Roll up, roll up! Stickers, badges, posters, T-shirts! I have entered the world of merchandise. OK, so it's not like there are queues around the block yet, but there's something life-affirming about making objects and sticking the name of your group on them, isn't there? Of course, it just means you're spending money you don't have but rather like wearing a suit to a job interview you somehow feel a bit naked turning up at shows without some merch. After briefly entertaining the idea of doing hip skinny shirts for girls and stylish polo shirts for boys, I was enlightened by Geoff, my business partner. A man seasoned with much more managerial experience than me, Geoff let me have it straight: "Ben, don't bother, it's only fat lads who buy band T-shirts - I've got an attic full of Mediums and Smalls."

So we're doing badges now instead - and maybe stickers too. I've always been a big fan of the band sticker. I remember buying a handful of Buzzcocks stickers at the first gig I went to when I was 12. Onto the school rough book they went, everyone in class was intrigued what this slightly sexy sounding thing was with its colliding ZZs. Bless Malcolm Garrett, for a brief moment I was the coolest person I knew. I've always striven to recreate this excitement with artists I've worked with. We did some amazing stickers for 60Ft Dolls, which featured the band's name using the Happy Shopper logo and font - a very clever trick considering the band had a song of that name. The marketing guy who did those for us is still around so I phoned him to ask his advice on stickers. Why was a quote I'd been given for stickers so much? - "Ah, that'll be the blades they have to make up - go for anything other than square, oblong or oval and it's really expensive." "Cat shape?" "There's your answer."

Still, it's exhilarating to see designs you've helped put together appear on walls or lapels. I look forward to seeing Glasgow's most fashionable swanning around the band's single launch this Friday sporting little cats on their thrift shop V necks. I've not got anything against making 'indie tent' T-shirts but given the sales upside of T-shirts in a band's early days (in my experience so far, about one per gig) I'd prefer to have something small, affordable and cute on sale rather than a large piece of fabric gaffa-taped hopefully to a felt board.

Talking of menswear and felt boards, I had a bizarre experience last week. The meetings I described in the last blog continued and on Thursday I found myself going over to see someone at PIAS distribution. I've known the lovely people there for many years, in the past they've distributed a lot of the records I've been most proud of: Indolent releases like Sleeper, the aforementioned Dolls, Wannadies, and Stephen Duffy as well as my own label Scared Hitless including the first Verruca Salt single. PIAS have recently moved to new offices, situated in a building which until recently were occupied by the kindly gentle folk of V2.

So here I am getting off the tube at Fulham Broadway and walking past the nasty TGI Fridays and the misshapen BMG Music tower towards Farm Lane, just as I did for most of 2007. The old V2 building was in many ways like the older V2 Building in Holland Park - a throwback to the glory days of record companies: a compact, warren-filled, converted older building, filled with enthusiastic young women, cynical youngish men and cardboard boxes filled with 'stock'. If you wander down Kensington High St towards Putney and take a look at Warners, EMI, Universal or SonyBMG you will see that each building is large and new and if there are boxes, then they are hidden away so that guests like me won't syphon off any Duffy stock to take to Record And Tape Exchange. If any further proof were needed that the industry's glory days are over, then look no further than the Universal building, which, like a massive, living iPod, has compressed virtually all of that is left of the UK record business into its shell.

Inside the old V2 building I am greeted by the jolly PIAS receptionist. The hand-carved-by-slaves V2-logo reception is still there, as is the inexplicable enormous Cuban artwork over the bar area, but the atmosphere, with emphasis on the third syllable, is gone; the building seems to have gained a joie de vivre that was missing by the time we limped out last year. It feels weird to be back, especially as I'm the one waiting in reception; I almost expect to see my old self sneaking out of the side door in its false beard trying to avoid a meeting with me. My host, Ian, comes down to greet me and we make small-to-medium talk as we skip up the gantry steps to what was the old marketing department. Blimey, they've kept the old rollerblinds covered in rock icons (Hendrix, Jagger, Strummer, etc - I always wondered idly in meetings how they would have looked if they'd stuck to a strictly V2 palette - Isabelle Campbell, Mark Lanegan, Alan from the Rakes, Lethal Bizzle - surely that would have been cooler, wouldn't it?).

As we walk past the old chairman's suite (now split into two more conservatively proportioned offices) I want to ask where we're going. Surely not! Is this a joke? He's not taking me back to the old V2 A&R department is he?

"And here's my office..." says Ian, ushering me into a room I am all too familiar with. "Nooooooo!" I feel like Charlton Heston's character at the end of Planet of The Apes. Yes, Ian has inherited my old office - what are the chances? etc. We spend the first five minutes, just laughing and comparing notes on the room. He has a framed Peter Tosh poster waiting to be hung, probably in the space where I my Clash poster was - plus ca change. On the felt pin board, is no oversized band T-shirt but a small Fred Perry sticker I had stuck up on the day I bought my current favourite shirt. I comment on it and we realise we are both wearing Fred Perrys.
"Hey let me ask you one thing, though, Ben - did you ever feel a strange vibration in here?"
"Yes!"
"Me too - it's weird isn't it? Where's it coming from?"
"No one could get to the bottom of it at V2 - Facilities just said it was the AC"
"But it's there even when the AC's not on"
"And sometimes not at all - then it comes back..."
"Your whole keyboard vibrates when you're typing."
"What can I say, I've been there..."

And so on. We did actually have a proper meeting after all the room-bonding, it transpired that there was not much for my bolt-on A&R company but possibly potential things for the Scottish band at a later date. A partial result then, if you're a glass-half-full man. Which, of course I'm not. But you know what was strangest about the meeting in my ex-office? - It felt amazing to be back but on the other side of the desk! Absolute tantamount proof of what I was saying in the last blog - to be able to walk out of that building, after a smile, a handshake and a 'see you soon'. Away from the strange inexplicable vibration, back into the world of badges, stickers and booking hotels. Single launch party tomorrow in Glasgow, I'll keep you posted how we do...

He's in a meeting ...

Over the last couple of weeks I've been having meetings with various record company executives about a business I have. It's not important what the business does - although if you do need a one-stop, bolt-on A&R service then I am very much your man... Ahem, sorry, which hat was I wearing? Right, sooooo, I've been in these meetings and the thing I've realised - apart from that the CD and download-selling trade is in a spot of trouble - is that I'm really enjoying not being the one who's hosting the meeting.

When you go in for work-related meetings, there's generally an unspoken hierarchy isn't there? The person coming in for the meeting, the person who's driven in, or in my case, got on the bus, is the guest, who is lavished with tea or coffee - and in some cases, a little cakey treat - but he is nevertheless very much the lower status meeting attendee. Particularly when he's there to sell something. The person hosting the meeting, on whose turf it is taking place, is the high status attendee. I've worked in offices of varying size for most of my life - either for various record companies or for online ISPs and so I've been the host many times. Either I would be an A&R person, lavishing my valuable time on young hopefuls or an Editor nodding sagely as sportily-dressed website entrepreneurs would list the reasons why we should be partnering up with them.

To be frank, these 'meetings' were pains in the arse for both parties. In the case of music, the poor artist or manager doesn't want someone to listen to their stuff in an office, an office?! This is their creation; their art - it must fill them full of loathing for the person sitting opposite them behind his desk. And the A&R man, listening to the music for the first time, sitting in front of the creators, aware that they're pretending not to watch your every facial tick... I mean, if you are a fan of music it's like having someone watching you wanking.

Sadly a lot of the time, the music just didn't connect with me. The number of times I would sit listening to someone's cassette (remember them?), it would finish, and I would find myself looking at a sea of expectant faces, whilst concluding a Sainsburys list in my head. One time, I found myself getting a fit of giggles during Track 1. I had to stop the tape and apologise. I put the music back on but promptly started crying with laughter again. It wasn't that the music was funny, I think it was because I'd just realised the absurdity of our situation. Another time, whilst exceptionally hungover, I put the cassette in, pressed play and the office-full of us waited for the first song to start. It didn't. After a few jokes about the 'ambient beginning', the singer remarked that the leader tape must be a bit longer than usual as Track 1 should have started by now. I casually glanced over at my cassette deck and realised I was in process of recording over Track 1. Bugger. I turned to the band and, with minimal eyelid-batting, said, "You know what, let's go to Track 2, shall we?"

Sometimes people would come in and say they had meetings when they didn't - it still goes on and you've got to admire the pluck. Last year, whilst at V2, I wasted many emails telling some Swedish songwriters that I never took meetings before hearing music. They refused to send me any music, claiming they were concerned about theft of their ideas. A couple of weeks later, Graham on reception phoned through to announce that my Swedish songwriter meeting was here. I ended up having to go down to reception to personally take the CDR and needless pile of A4. I claimed I would love to spend more time with them but was already busy in a meeting. Actually, I was just starving and really needed to go and buy a sandwich. For some reason they insisted on waiting in reception until their next 'meeting'. If this had been Universal they would have been escorted gently out of the building but V2 didn't really stretch to a bouncer budget so they made themselves comfortable. In the end, I had to scuttle out of the side door wearing a false moustache and beard.

Whilst at East West in Kensington, I once got a call from reception that a girl was here with a tape of her band for me. Knowing full well, she didn't have an appointment but admiring the pluck, I went to reception to relieve her of her demo - after all it might turn out to be the next... The girl turned out to be Justine Frischman with the first Suede demo - she lived over the road and we were the nearest record company to her.

The worst meeting I ever had - and believe me there is some stiff competition - was when my boss at RCA dumped a meeting with Kevin Rowland on me. This was in the early 90s, long before Rowland got off whatever drugs he was doing, did his transvestite thing for Creation and turned into the fairly reliable elder statesman he is now. I'd already heard his new album, on which he reunited with ex-Dexys trombonist 'Big' Jim Patterson. It wasn't great. Mike, my boss at the time, suddenly had to leave the building at short notice and asked me to dep for him. No problem. Into my office walked The Manager, 'Big' Jim, and Kevin. The former Dexys singer was not looking his best: imagine a malnourished Robert De Niro in Cape Fear - furrowed brow, tattoos, clenched fists... frankly he looked like he was ready to do some damage.

We exchange pleasantries and start talking about the project:
Me: I'm a big fan of all the Dexys stuff - I particularly love Don't Stand Me Down, totally underrated album, in my view...
Rowland (staring hard at me): We're not here to talk about the past, we're hear to talk about the future.
Me: Good point
Rowland: I think this album is the best thing I've ever done
Me: Well...
Rowland: What do you think?
At this point I go to flick ash from my freshly-lit cigarette into the ashtray and notice that one I am already smoking is still lying there. Clearly, I'm not doing the best job at masking my fear
Me: Well, I've only listened to it a couple of times...
Rowland: I think ------ is one of the best songs I've written
Me: Well let's put it on now and listen to it
I speed forward to the track in question. We listen to it, Big Jim and The Manager both nodding along far too enthusiastically, Kevin staring intensely at me. It finishes.
Rowland: What do you think?
Me: Well, I have to be honest, Kevin, I don't think it's for me.
Rowland: Well, you're in the wrong job, then.
At this point he stands up almost immediately. Christ, he's going to kill me! No, he's merely standing up to go. The meeting is over. The three of them walk out with only the most cursory of goodbyes. I am clearly, in their eyes, Satan.
A friend of mine who worked in marketing told me later that he watched the three of them marching silently down the RCA corridor towards the exit. As they reached the end of the corridor, Kevin turned to the manager and said: "I think that went quite well."

So anyway, I totally sympathise with anyone being in the meeting host position. None of my recent meetings have been as bad as that Rowland meeting - for starters I am prone to being quite adorable when I'm in the hot chair in front of the desk. But the point I'm trying to make here is that I'm glad it's not me doing the hosting; that it's not me being the grown-up 'in the office.'

In addition to this, everyone in record company offices seems to be suffering at the moment. One independent exec told me that the residual flow of money he used to get from catalogue sales of his artists has completely dried up, there are literally no sales any more, where before there always used to be enough to keep the company afloat. Another complained of the major label he worked for, being only interested in week-one sales, it didn't matter if his albums ended up selling well over time, in the company's eyes they were finished if the Week One over-the-counter didn't hit the mark. A third told me how CD sales were down by almost half on last year's average - where last year he could sell 30K and justify the cost of production and a reasonable marketing campaign, now he sold 15K which meant his production and marketing involved doing it all himself and crossing his fingers. I asked him what the solution was and he smiled and said "Suicide?". I think he was joking but we were several storeys high at the time.

Of course, one reason all my meeting hosts could all have been complaining about the industry so vocally to me is that they wanted to very firmly state that they couldn't give me any freelance work; read my lips, Wardle: LOSE MY NUMBER. I'm glad that thought never crossed my mind as I sat in their offices, I would have have had to resort to weeping and genuflecting.

My four year old daughter Madeleine asked me the other day if she could come and see my office. I'm sure she would be disappointed if she came in because there is no swank: there's only four of us in there, no girls dressed in pink, no exciting drinks machine, bleepy security passes or wall-mounted plasma screens. She would find it dull. I, on the other hand, am punching the air.

Happy Happy Merry Merry

What a start to the year.

So I come back into the office, a handful of days after my second daughter is born and discover that things are going to be even tougher this year than they were last year. My friend who runs a PR company has given me some space in his office to use while we kickstart the management company. One of the fringe benefits of this, I've discovered, is that he always knows news stories ahead of them breaking in the papers. So before the wires were sizzling, Andy says to me: "Happy New Year? Not at EMI. It's going to be carnage" And it was.

Before EMI employees had fully recovered from their Christmas splurge or even plonked down in front of their computers to greet 2008, one of their biggest artists Robbie Williams went to the press saying he's 'going on strike'. And contained in the body of the Times piece which appeared on 11 January was the bombshell that 'massive layoffs' were about to happen.

And sure enough, the following Monday, Guy Hands, director of Terra Firma, the private equity company that now owns EMI, told his assembled staff that there will be job cuts of up to 2000.

I looked that figure up online just now and the first news link I got - a BBC one - gave me the headline EMI announces 1,800 job cuts. Funny, I thought, I was under the impression that it wasn't a specific number - that Hands had only given a ballpark figure of 1500 to 2000 redundancies, roughly a third of the international EMI workforce. But then I noticed the date on the feature - 20 March 2002! The story was about the cuts about to be made by then-chairman Allain Levy to try and save the 'financially indebted company'. Plus ca change. Mind you, back then they could at least claim that it was Mariah Carey's fault. They'd just spent £38 million quid getting out of their deal with her which had gone - and here the expression takes on a deeply significant meaning - tits up. In 2002, the 1800 figure was a fifth of EMI's workforce. Now the 2000 cut represents a third. So in five years the workforce will have gone from 10,000 to 4000! Er, why I am attempting to remain in the music business? This thought wafts over my horizon as I take a call from the studio where one of our band rehearses and discover I owe them £253. How am I going to make that back, let alone £38 million?

A friend of mine who works for EMI phoned me up over the Christmas break. Like me, he enjoys writing and he'd spent his festive period writing a bullet-point guide on how to save the record industry. He was probably fearing for his job - unnecessary in my opinion as he's one of the few undeniably successful members of staff. Christ, if he feels insecure imagine what the rest of the building is like. So he'd had a go at this analysis of where the record business had all gone wrong and what should be done about it. It was a letter he planned to send to Music Week, a kind of music biz variation on a letter to The Times. It was doomed to failure. There is no step by step guide to solving the current conundrum which is that people can copy and duplicate their own music from friends or file sharing . Record industry currency - the finished, mastered, shiny new product is now only distinguishable from what we can burn at home in that it has artwork, and sometimes that means a 'four page booklet' which is a piece of folded paper with the artist's name printed on the front and a tracklisting on the back. And the kids don't even want artwork! We do, us middle -aged men, the ones who got a whiff of new wave, or new romanticism or even got off our mash at Shoom - we want artwork, we demand packaging. I want the box set of Pink Floyd albums in replica sleeves. DON'T ASK ME WHY! I just like artwork and packaging. But if I was 15, I wouldn't give an arctic monkeys, I'd download the whole lot overnight, and spend the money on trainers and cider.

In his letter, my pal- like me, an A&R person - put faith in 'making great records' and to a large extent I agree with this. He proposed that a certain album that is currently selling really well, a CD that was one of the few 'must-haves' in 2007 is a record without a single duff track on it and that's why it's doing so well. Make records like this, my friend argued, and people will buy them. The problem is that most albums are, to quote my mate Sarah Cawood, "Two killers, the rest of it fillers." And now, given that we can get the two killers for the princely sum of £1.58 on iTunes, why should we pay a tenner for the rest of it in a plastic box? Oh, and it was Amy Winehouse's album which my mate was going on about, which, say what you want about the smack-taking, is an unarguably palatable record. Better than Mika's anyway.

So do I expect to make equally thrilling records with the artists I manage? Here's what I think: Always expect the least expected thing. I don't know if I appropriated that bit of unhelpful wisdom or whether it's based on my own A&R experiences but I know that it is pretty much always the case in the music business. No one wanted Radiohead apart from Keith Wozencroft - at EMI incidentally. Why? Because the singer had a wonky eye, their songs were so-so, and crucially, they were all different heights! Imagine the Beatles or the Stones if there'd been a really tall one and a really short one! Riddiculous! Like Radiohead were ever going to happen! Last year, everyone, every single record company and publisher were queuing up to sign a certain female singer. She was feted; wined and dined, and everyone thought that signing her was, in current industry parlance, a 'no brainer' A friend of mine in music publishing asked her what she wanted out of a career in music and rather than saying, 'artistic satisfaction', or 'to get my songs heard', or even 'to get laid by skinny-trousered Camden pretties', she was honest and said, "A Coutts bank account'. Her record bombed and I suspect she's still with Nat West.

So the swan who signs for millions will frequently end up in the bargain bin, whilst the ugly duckling, who a solitary A&R person begrudgingly does a development deal with, frequently blossoms into a million seller. How's that for a January mixed metaphor?

So I make no expectations on my charges. We're just getting them to write the best songs they can And with that in mind, we've decided it's time to do some recordings ...

The Who, the What and the Why

Who

My name is Ben Wardle and I’ve worked in music for most of my life without being a musician. I've been an A&R man for record companies, you see. A&R, for those of you that don’t know, stands for Artists & Repertoire: the job of finding and developing new talent.

I’ve signed and worked with a few artists you may have heard of and quite a lot you've definitely never heard of. It's a brilliant job if you're being successful and the worst job in the world when no one is buying your records. Watching a band I looked after supporting REM at Milton Keynes was a treat; having to tell one of favourite artists that he was dropped, was not. I once signed a band, whose drummer tried to flush the freshly drawn-up contract down the loo, and I once sat in the living room of the drunken singer from one of the UK's biggest bands as he played me his songs and the songs of one of a rival band on his piano and ranted about how they had ripped him off.

Eventually I got fed up with it all and tried to escape the music business. The first thing I did was help compile a dictionary of quotations for a big publisher but my natural tendency for making things up won out: one of the quotations I invented (from Ernest Hemingway) made it into the finished book. I decided to carry on writing and went on to co-author the Virgin Guide to Music on the Web, which now probably reads like an pictogram on a cave wall. After that, I became an online entertainment editor for six years. But, despite trying to focus on Film and Books and Theatre, I found myself eventually dealing exclusively in music-related features and in the end I gave it up and came back to A&R. I'm still writing though, and I'm hoping my latest, Pink Flag, will get a 3 For 2 in Waterstones any day now ...


Where

I live in Walthamstow, London with my wife, our four-year-old daughter Madeleine, my brand new daughter, Esther (born on January 8th!) and our one-eared cat, Tigger. I’m sure there must be some conclusion to be drawn from my cat’s auditory want and my career but I’ll leave you to draw it.


What

I’m starting again. You've probably read about the demise of the record-selling business recently - Radiohead letting people pay what they want for their album, Madonna signing to a ticketing business, Robbie going on strike etc. But of course there are other casualties - the people who work for the companies. My last employer, V2, was bought in October by Universal and myself and the rest of the staff were made redundant. Soon a similar thing will happen to EMI and there are rumours about Sony/BMG and Universal.

So am I leaving the music biz? Am I going to try and get a job in a more robust industry than the fickle world of rock and pop? Maybe British Rail or the NHS? Hell, no! To paraphrase Village People, I can't stop the music, I can't leave it alone. And as I hit my 44th year on the planet, I've decided to set up my own music business, to become - or attempt to become - self-employed in rock.

As 50 begins to raise its wrinkly forehead over the horizon, I've decided to manage a band of five 20-something girls from Swindon as well as four art-school boys from Glasgow. Yes, I'm very aware, given the current climate in the music industry, of the idiocy of this- but despite it all, I feel hugely optimistic.

Why?

Why do I feel optimistic? I have no idea. I'm normally a devout glass-half-empty merchant. Perhaps I"m having some sort of manic episode ... No, the truth is, A&R people, contrary to the common perception, are mainly naive fools who have an almost religious faith in the power of music. And you know what? I think the bands we're working with are really good and stand every chance of being successful.

So why write a blog? "I’ll never write a blog," I said about four months ago," they’re invariably written by self-obsessed pub bores, who assume that everyone is interested in their tedious opinions.” I don’t necessarily feel any different now; a lot of blogs do seem to be terribly narcissistic, but I now see the point of them: if you have something meaningful going on, then it helps to write about what happens just to make sense of it all. So rather than writing in a diary that goes under my pillow never to be seen by anyone until I die, at which point some indifferent grandchild reads a paragraph from it before putting it straight in the recycling bin – rather than this, why not do it online so others can read about all the mistakes I’m making and maybe give me some advice?

So there it is, the who, the what and the why. And when, what about when?

Ah, that'd be now