Last week:
Despite really terrible weather conditions, both of my gigs went ahead on the weekend. On Saturday night I played with Atlanta Soul at Cafe Artisan in Rawtenstall, which is near Burnley. This gig was excellent on all levels, and it begs the question: where are the other venues to match this??
Based in West Yorkshire, I've been mainly used to playing in pubs, virtually none of which have a PA system or any sort of emphasis on live music. This venue had it's own PA, an engineer and an easy load-in. I could practically throw my gear into the car from the back door. This was the best load-in since the Boot & Shoe in Ackworth....one of the few venues I've played to match this one.
Then there's the element ranked close to Satan's spit in my home county....a door charge! Of £5!!! Ok-pause whilst Yorkshiremen reading this blog are given chance to get up off the floor.
OK now? Right. As I said, there is a door charge and a fiver may seem a lot to watch a band playing all covers, with no known following in the area and making it's debut at the club. But it works. 60 tickets had been sold IN ADVANCE. And more turned out on the night paying on the door. Now we have the makings of a proper gig. 60 folk have paid to see a band they've not heard of and are going to come and enjoy themselves.
Needless to say it went down a storm and I'm looking forward to being back there in March. The sound was terrific too. The set-up at Cafe Artisan is first class.
On Sunday night I played solo at the Rose & Crown in Greetland, with the temperature dipping well into the negatives that night. It was a bit on the quiet side but still enjoyable to do.
This week:
Quieter this time with just one gig with Atlanta Soul on Saturday at the Townhouse in Macclesfield. This should give me a bit of chance to recover from the extra work required last week to get around in the snow.
A-Z of music:
(or should that be musique?)
I watch the Sky Arts channel quite a lot. As they tend to show a lot of good music and music documentaries, mainly on artists I like (ie, old music!). Recently by chance I got to see a documentary about Jean-Michel Jaree. It reminded me once again of my love for Jarre and synth music in general. Long before I sang songs in bands I composed and performed instrumental music heavily influenced by the likes of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Jarre.
These days as I've got deeper and deeper into singer-songwriting it's all too easy to forget how long ago I loved this type of music and produced quite a lot of it. It makes one think...
Moan of the week:
Last week I tentatively mentioned the newly revamped scene at Myspace. Myspace Beta. This was before I'd got to realise the full extent of it's sins. I'm beginning to wonder whether Beta is the greek word for 'Shit' when it comes to technology. Remember BetaMax for example?
Basically, they've felt the need to change everything (I don't like change) and generally make the whole thing a poorly diluted form of Facebook (which I also don't like). However, having found my way around and got to know how to do the basic operations (adding friends, adding comments etc...) I relaxed a little.
But worse was to follow when I realised they'd changed my profile page (the one you see) to the new format. Then I really got annoyed. All the work which has gone into building that page has been swept away. It used to be so simple and the template allowed you to add in things as you went along, such as embedded videos and widgets. Now no html seems to be allowed. So all my vital links to my other pages (where I sell my CDs and downloads) have gone. The biog isn't immediately visible, the whole thing has been mucked around with. It's made it hard to promote my music on the site where once it was straightforward.
While Facebook continues to actively discourage the promotion of businesses on it's site, we're now faced with the tricky situation of there being no one definitive, easy-to-use music social networking site. I wonder if Purevolume.com is still going??
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