There's always a couple of people drinking beer at ten in the morning when you fly with Easy Jet or Ryanair. I don't know why this is, I can only assume that there are a couple of people on every flight who like a drop of Special Brew before sitting in a enclosed space with 200 others, but on grown-up airlines they are normally in the Executive Lounge so we don't see them. So anyway, we're standing about half way down a long queue at Gate 51 at Stansted Airport, watching the screen flashing Last Call. The urgency of the message doesn't seem to have connected with the blue-jacketed staff who are either standing around looking confused or sharing a private joke with one another.
It's a 'proper outing' as Geoff calls it in his sage Essex brogue; the three of us are all dressed in our manager coats (mine, a rather splendid corduroy Crombie, which makes me feel quite thrusting) and waiting to fly to Glasgow for the launch party of my band's single. The actual single - 80 copies of the 7" - is in my hand luggage as it's only just arrived via our Leeds-based indie label from the factory in Czechoslovakia. Such is the high-powered, multinational music business we now work in. And we're flying to Glasgow - we're quite literally jet-set. Posters are up all over Glasgow (as well as some in Edinburgh and Dundee), flyers are in the coolest coffee bars and pubs, and the band announced the gig on Vic Galloway's Radio One show two nights before. But the venue is a bit off the beaten track - I still couldn't describe to you where it is. So will anybody actually come?
The flight should have left five minutes ago so our frenzied rush from the departure lounge was entirely pointless. Why is it that every time I fly, I'm either kicking my heels and collecting dust or I'm Lateboy pleading with gate staff to let me on the plane? It's death either way - from boredom or heart attack - like the Eddie Izzard pears joke "Don't ripen yet, don't ripen yet. Wait til he goes out the room! Ripen! Now now now!"
We're important managers, fielding calls - Charlie is setting up a top level meeting to discuss the girl band, Geoff is talking to his Scandinavian counterpart about his band's forthcoming album, and I'm... well, I'm being told off by my wife for not sorting out use of a friend's cottage so we can have a holiday with my mother. Actually, I had sorted out some dates but it turns out that mum can't make those because she's busy. Her diary's full. She's in her mid-seventies for God's sake! She should be sitting at home knitting and watching BBC costume drama - not booking herself weekends away with her friends or nights in London's West End. Most of the time she's actually on the South Bank, queueing up to get last minute bargain tickets for the National. I mean, I keep up with culture, I go out, see exhibitions, read the papers, listen to Radio 4. But a lot of the time my mum is there first. This is a conversation that happened last December:
Mum: Ben, darling, you like Bob Dylan, have you seen I'm Not There?
Me: No, mum, I really want to, it's not out until next week - meant to be great.
Mum: Mmm, I'm not sure I'd agree with that...
Me: Why? Have you seen it?
Mum: Yes, Maureen and I saw it last week at LFF - we got seniors concessions...
Me: (Trying not to get annoyed that mum has trumped me - again): Oh right - I didn't know you liked Dylan
Mum (in a breezy, throwaway tone) No, I don't really ... Well, I don't know much about him - and after seeing the film I don't think I want to...
So I sort out some new dates that fit into my mum's busy arts schedule. And still the Ryanair queue is stationary. The drinkers - bizarrely at the front of the queue, and therefore letting down their rep - are onto their second cans. Then my mobile goes off - it's my radio promotions guy. A plugger rarely calls unless he has good news and this time is no exception - we've got a Zane play! Hooray! Zane Lowe, Radio 1's exhuberant, Antipodean indie figurehead is going to play the Scottish band's single next week. And it's not in the Fresh Meat slot. This is where he pitches three unsigned bands against one another and let's the audience decide by text. Inevitably, it's always the band with the geekiest online fanbase who win. And the other two bands will suffer the ignominy of having had their chance and blown it. I suspect if we were on we wouldn't win. I need to work on our online presence.
So Radio 1 - check us out! I immediately feel like a manager again. Then the queue disperses and people start bolting for another gate. There has of course been no announcement, Ryanair clearly favouring the Chinese whisper approach to information dissemination. We all bomb over to the other Gate, hot on the heels of the Special Brew drinkers who seem to be ahead of everyone again - maybe they work for Ryanair.
On the plane we discuss the night ahead. The band's rehearsal space is in fantastic converted Warehouse called SWG3, which houses a few other bands and a lot of contemporary artists. Walking through it to the rehearsal space is like walking through the back of a film lot and Tate Modern - concrete floor and painted brick walls stuffed with sculpture, fine art, and equipment. One artist has even installed a shed, which she works in.
We've tied the launch party into the Gi Festival of Contemporary Visual Art, which was easy as SWG3 are hosting lots of Gi events and will thus have a dressed and prepared exhibition space for us to perform in. Sorry, I feel I'm putting in too many links, but I was bowled over by the performance space when I saw it. On the ground floor of the warehouse and decked with black sound-absorbing sheets, DJ booth and even a cocktail bar, the space was the perfect combination of authentic warehouse space with stylish trimmings . But it was at that point almost entirely empty. Now I felt myself getting the 'what if no one comes?' anxiety. I mean, I had had to get a cab here - and it wasn't the first time I'd been. I still couldn't tell you where it is in relation to the rest of Glasgow - mind you, as I've said before, they do change the streets around here fairly frequently.
As we finished stuffing some goodie bags - to be made available to the first lucky 20 fans who bought the single - the place begins to get its first punters: a girl with a camera, the guy from the band's Leeds record label, some more girls, an older couple. I put up a poster behind the bar advertising the single's availability for £4. The studio is run by a guy whose real name is Mutley - a powerhouse of energy and charm who offers to print a poster in his office upstairs which messages the single instead of using the one I've done. This is both generous and extremely astute - my handwriting is indeed illegible and might hinder sales but also crucially, even one hand-scrawled poster on the space's immaculate black and white walls will spoil its look. Mutley is clearly a big and small picture manager. Even the glass-topped bar tables, where people are currently placing their Becks and Moscow Mules, turn out to be designed by Turner Prize-nominated Jim Lambie. They're worth £10K each apparently, so I hope no one gets too pissed ...
Behind the bar is a man spinning a vodka bottle on his head. He then throws it up in the air, catches it on his left shoulder, rolls it down his left arm, flicks it back up into the air with his wrist and catches it in the bottom half a cocktail shaker he's holding in the other hand. There is a ripple of applause as four or five mobile phones are whipped out to film his next drink.
"The barman's amazing," I comment to William from the band
"Yeah, he's the UK's Bartender of the Year." he says, "He has a practice space in the Warehouse."
I've since Googled this I can't find the chap from SWG3 - he was certainly much cooler - and also younger - than the fella in the above Youtube clip but hey, watching live Flair Bartending from a couple of feet away is highly recommended. Almost as much fun as drinking.
By the time I go off with Charlie, Geoff and our investor for a bite to eat, the place is filling up a bit. It's not worryingly empty, anyway. But it is now nine o'clock - surely if people were coming they would be here by now. I'm also concerned that the sound isn't going to be great. I've been told that a previous show the band played here was marred by poor sound. Not the sound engineer's fault (George, who does sound here, is the band's own sound guy) but just bad acoustics. We leave the building and get a cab to a recommended pizza place. That turns out to be full so we go the Indian restaurant next door and have the worst curry in Europe. The signature ingredient here turns out to be Ghee - mmmm, just can't get enough of that clarified butter. Bloated and disappointed we sit like four unwanted balloons in the cab back to the warehouse, making lame, Ghee-based puns. Alan McGhee, Ghee De Maupassant...
At the Warehouse we're in for a nasty surprise.
I'll let you know what happens in Part 2 soon...
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
"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...
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...
Sunday, 6 April 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, 30 March 2008
We Got It For Cheap
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.
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.
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...
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