MUSICAL CORNUCOPIA PT 1 - MY CUP RUNNETH OVER

Greetings, From the disheveled but joyous ‘state of independence’, that is Big Chill Label and my conduit TCF (Total Creative Freedom Ltd). BTW Now the majors are uploading digitally from Day 1 of promo, how does that impact on us indie types who work our artists over far longer periods of time? 

We have to work in Ye Olde Fashioned way, music first and the promo grows with the record and not the retail led, pre-sales gamble that has not had a useful impact on the quality of music generally (the X Factor is the ultimate expression of that system). Let me know your thoughts.

“Butterfly Heart – The Valentines Remixes” 

On The Big Chill Label: OUT FEB 14th (Romance is not dead people)

Chris Coco is releasing a beautiful collection of remixes for Valentines Day called “Butterfly Heart – The Valentines Remixes”. Here is  a soundcloud link to the remixes.



  Chris Coco - Butterfly Heart (Remixes) by chris coco

Below is an amusing romantic anecdote just posted on emusic, where Chris attempts to remember the sound track to his first kiss. 


http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/first_love_soundtrack/index.html

The Buck Stops Here Universal Island/Tom Jones - WTF - & Signing Atalanta

Signing a record is a strange thing, its an imaginative task and one not to be taken lightly and on the other hand it cannot be taken too seriously. The music industry is like some weird betting shop where every one is trying to predict the allusive and disparate forces of public taste . Really the whole game is up for grabs because subversive forces are at work (Please God this is the Music Biz after all!) Anonymous executives are seemingly falling on their own knives and offering themselves up as media sacrifices in a desperate bid to get attention and thus secure their investment. 

Genius or genuine 'leek' who knows, but as the national emblem of my homeland Wales (and this being a Tom Jones record) there is some random magical force at work here. I can imagine the soon to be promoted junior Island pr assistant/tea person chipping something in about 'leeks' and it all snowballing from there. Wales + Tom Jones + Leeks + having a Leek + leading to an 'embarrassing pr leek' and there you have lateral PR genius in its most direct form. Eureka, light up the National grid with that one baby cakes. Alternatively have a quick read of the latest Tom Jones 'scandal' in today's suitably animated Daily Telegraph so you have an overview of where I am coming from.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/7870995/Tom-Joness-record-boss-complains-his-new-album-sounds-like-hymns.html

There is one line quoting the incredulous 'Island Records Executive' that just makes me howl with laughter " what are you thinking when he went all spiritual?". 

If only we could all control the workings of an artist and the Lord! It's the age old industry dilemma. How revealing and how very odd  to phrase it in that way but it just adds gravitas to the leek. You have the artist and God on one side and the record label 'banker' being 'direct' (according to Tom's people) on the other. Hmmmmm.

I think this is a bit of genius pr myself which makes Tom look rebellious and relevant rallying against those evil 'execs' in the name of spirituality and artistic integrity.  As a PR type myself I take my hat off to a card well played.

It may have been a sincere comment by the 'Exec' but to suggest that the A & R department at Island have not communicated prior to signing, recording and most importantly 'paying' for this album is blatantly ridiculous. 

They would have agonized over which direction to take the 'Jones' in. Entire committees of Universal/Island types would have spoken to focus groups picked randomly to represent 'public taste'. It would have been planned like a military operation. The oft quoted 'Johnny Cash' reference is the context they are cultivating for our 'Tom' because they want to 'Johnny Cash In' to be frank. Get middle America to see the 'Jones' as a defender of Christ and you have mobilized an incredible force. I think they were keen to shed the 'Sex Bomb' glitz myself as that does not quite tally with the 'new spiritual' Tom. This bladder bursting and well timed leek has done its job beautifully. The Internet is alive with the 'scandal'. They are looking for Grammy award winning status and going back to the Gospel was a deliberate choice.

Oddly enough I signed the license for an album today by Atalanta (a Brighton based act) for an album called '1000 Days'. Here is a link to a sample of the musical delights to come. It's a different thing when you sign a body of work completed by an artist in the relatively 'pure space' of their own creative world. I am happy to engage with that.

http://soundcloud.com/search?q[fulltext]=atalanta#

I will never have to bemoan the vehicle that has been sent to me as I know which car I am getting into. Universal/Island if your complaint is genuine (which I doubt) perhaps you should 'try before you buy' in future. It's the way ahead and some. If you were sent a 'hearse' you did order it and you are driving it in the wake of the late great Johnny Cash, even that reference is transparent.

Falling by Atalanta

Falling by Atalanta

RECORDS I HAVE KNOWN AND PLUGGED - PART 1 - A FIRE AT KEATON'S BAR & GRILL feat Debbie Harry and Elvis Costello

Wow, is all I can say, it was so amazing to work on this record. It changed my life. I was lucky enough to work for Bob and Pat at Six Degrees records on this awesome release in the UK. It was also a headline show at The London Jazz Festival in 2000. 


I am not going to talk about the technical PR side of working on this record, that in no way touches what it means to me. I could never know how important it would become and actually was even while I was working on it.  I gave a copy of the album to a very close friend who was having chemo for breast cancer. 


This person was and always will be very important to me. As she was going through such tough treatment she told me that the record comforted and helped her through. The narrative and story was great to escape to. She also loved jazz, Debbie Harry and Elvis Costello so the record was completely perfect in every detail. As a perk of my job I was able to get her tickets to the show at The Royal Festival Hall. I didn't realize then that it was our last evening out. I also didn't have any idea that I myself would face a battle with breast cancer almost a decade later. We'd met when we were both pregnant and I was very fortunate not to face leaving my child at the age of 4, she faced that prospect with incredible grace. Her bravery and strength still touches me. 


My friend Alison is with me always and I remember her through this music, and the courage and humour that she showed in the face of something so sad and uncontrollable. Music is so much more than something commercial it really does weave itself into your memories in a totally unique way.  


Other memories that I cherish of the Festival Hall show and campaign generally follow. I loved seeing the exceptional amped up New York jazz chops of the fierce and vibrant musicians back stage. Taking a hilarious  walk down a never ending BBC tunnel with Debbie Harry and Roy Nathanson, between BBC Radio 3 & BBC GLR. As we rambled along Debbie began counting the numerous black and white stiff labeled portraits of stuffy and exclusively male BBC Controllers whispering 'oh my gawd, not another man' in a broad New York accent. By the time we got to the end of the tunnel we were laughing so much, we had tears streaming down our cheeks. She seemed to me to be an adorable a proper, woman's woman. I was so in awe of Debbie Harry that I had to dye my hair red to cope with being in the same room as her. 


You can listen to the album below.


 http://shop.sixdegreesrecords.com/apppage=Product&service=external&sp=SC0A8024B0EWUAWSFF027J

Labels: 

Getting beyond the snare, tricking the trap and opening mine!

The above is me as a teenager (1986) being a 'pop siren' or attempting to be a desirable 'industrial product'. Everyone told me I looked 'so fabulous' on the day and assured me that fame and money were just around the corner! As they say one is born everyday and there is no fool like a young fool following her 'dream'.


However as confessions go a mad pulsating interest in the communal muse could be construed as a weakness, a symptom of my midlife crisis, pure folly and a form of insanity. However this word muncher and page devourer views things through a different glass lightly. As all the doom merchants and grey expressionists purge the music industry of all it's joy I stand firm on the rainbow. 


Just because the industrial model is producing mass market TV celebutantes that rise on a Christmas whim and fall on the rocks of the New Year, it does not mean we all have to throw our toys out of the pram. And before you ask celebutauntes is a word btw wikkipedia said so. For those of us that are in it 'for the love' then all this conditional discharging of "I release this sound into the world and expect this in return" will have to change. Cave people didn't expect royalties folks, they just enjoyed themselves and got down with the crushed bettles.


Most artists I speak to still measure their success by how much money they are making regardless of genre, wedge talks and poverty hurts because it means you are unsuccessful and then by extension that you are 'not any good' which is the hidden crippling fear of anyone brave enough to perform. In my other capacity as an A & R person for The Big Chill Label (www.bigchill.net/label) and generally from working with musicians  for the last few decades nothing gets the jollies going better than a nice big pay packet. It's a beautiful thing believe me when it happens but this latent desire for money is undermining us all. 


Michael Jackson didn't seem to me to benefit from the industry although he is technically on a 'product level' it's biggest 'success' story. I don't know anyone that could look at his life and envy the squalid and merciless way it ended. Even though he was thought to be on a ground breaking and high royalty of 25% that still meant the label was on 75%. Would anyone in normal day to day life stay in a job where they only got 25% of the income they generated. I think there would be riots but as artists we are so impoverished that if anyone waves a few hundred quid at as we are practically prepared to sign our lives away.


I remember as a teenage wipper snapper signing to Virgin 10 and thinking that at long last I was going to be a 'star'. It felt like my personal invisibility cloak was going to be washed away by the magical waves of acclaim. Now I know that was dumb, but I still see people tied up in that reasoning. Making music is a gift, if you are lucky enough to posses that gift sharing it is a necessity.


The fact that most talented people now have access to the tools that are needed to create music is not a tragedy, it is a fundamental revolution in the musical arts. It makes the 'cottage music business' a real possibility and with energy, commitment and above all patience, sustainable and psychologically healthy careers become possible. It may lack the dysfunctional immortal glitz of the 'superstar' but it does in some way free us all from a boring and culturally domineering cliche.


As far as I am concerned the more music the merrier.  I know media and industry types are perturbed by the random output of the masses but I love it. I rejoice because however good or bad at it you are making music makes people happy. It might be hard to brand, without leaders and clearly defined 'scenes' and 'trends' but out there in the ether, stories are being told and songs are being sung that will endure and will be born into and out of this patient and tolerant musical revolution.