Mancunian Blues
Created | Updated Dec 16, 2004
This Is The First Festive Mancunian Blues
So let's start it off in with some Scroogean
sentiments.
Can somebody tell shops that you can interchange the 4 xmas standards with some good songs as they play them over the PA. I'm not feeling too festive at the moment, partly because I'm an ex-Jewish Pagan, partly because the big screen outside my office and the big
wheel have been playing xmas carols endlessly for the past 2 weeks and we have 2 more weeks of this before I can retreat to warmer climes.
Did anybody know that Xmas is in the MS Word dictionary, but if you write xmas, it can't guess?
Anyway, I was watching Narcissus at The Night and Day last week. Okay it was a sauna even on the 1st day of advent (see, xmas reference!!), but at least there was tap water behind the bar. Narcissus were supporting Rachel Stamp's Manchester stop on their UK tour, and it was nice to have a gig with a fairly big band. We were squeezed onto the bill by Nick, the singer from Midland Railway, who've been doing fairly well at that venue. So cheers to Nick for
getting us the gig.
While there, I was asked what venues will take bands without hearing a demo. Hmm, okay well there's... And I stopped, 'cause I couldn't think of one city centre venue. Midland Railway don't have a demo and have got pretty good gigs, but mainly because the venues know they can bring a decent crowd in from their old Pink Fluffy Cloud Machine days.
The Star and Garter is an obvious one, it allows anybody to put a gig on, however it expects payment and is best for promoters rather than individual bands. I'm helping start up a bands night on Fridays at the Bowling Green, just outside the city centre, which will let bands turn up without demos, but other than that, I couldn't name one.
So, that leads me to one of the most important and unseen parts of the music business, the studio.
When I did my first proper album, it was a studio in a council flat; just me and a few guitars. It took me a day to record and a day to mix for 60 minutes of songs. However, take a band, fully set up the drum kit, get all the vocal harmonies right, allow the guitarist to overdub his parts to infinity, add some keyboards and you could be looking at 3 days in the studio for 3 songs. And that's just the recording - mixing can take at least that long. This can come to £500 in a moderately priced studio. Given that most bands can make, at best, £50 from a gig, of which a chunk of that should pay for transport, equipment costs and
bribing friends, a demo looks like serious outlay for any band.
This demo, then, can act as the key to get into the door, not only with venues, but with management, publishers, media and record companies. But only if they look good. A demo on a CD with a bit of hastily scrawled pen on it inside a clear plastic sleeve won't
win friends. The demo should look professional. So add on top of the demo cost, and the CD cost, paying either for the ink and paper to print your own or paying somebody else to print them out properly. This
probably adds up to a couple of quid per CD.
I think that a good looking, professional style demo can tell people more about a band than just what they sound like. It can tell people that these are committed musicians, who can get themselves organised,
who you can expect to work to achieve something.
Saying this, I've been waiting 6 months for a band to mix a demo and provide me with a model for the cover so I can do some sending outs and start putting the word on the street about their music. In the mean
time, I cranked up my portastudio and recorded somebody's 13 track album in locations across the North West, mixed it and got it realised. If people want to get a copy, contact details can be found here, I'd recommend it!!
Anyway, it's time for me to hit the sack and bid you a happy festive season and best wishes for the New Year. Hopefully I'll be able to make it to the winter meet, and may see some of you there.
Till next time
Love, peace and blues
tjm
