There’s this band, right, I love them, I am not going to mention their name here, and they don’t have a manager.
I first saw them at the Barfly a couple of months ago when my colleague/Sky Larkin co-manager Gareth invited me along to see them – they were unmanaged and he’d been invited down. We both thought they were great, and also that we didn’t have enough time to do it. Seemingly everyone else thinks that too, and so they remain manager-less.
A trip to Leeds the other week to catch up with Sky Larkin included going to see said band, and we got into a bit of a chat. They’re finding it a little overwhelming, I think – I’d find it tough if I had a record deal and my album was about to come out and really a lot of people (in an indie way) like it an awful lot. I mean, I’ve got a pretty good head on my shoulders and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for sorting out a band’s trip to Japan…
Bands in all positions are left without one member of a team – GoodBooks don’t have a publishing deal, and people always look shocked at that – but when that member of the team is the manager, the person who’s meant to pull everyone together, it’s hardly an enviable position for the band to be in. There’s a lot of not very nice people in “this industry” (always sounds like such a disgusting phrase, doesn’t it?) from lawyers to PRs to A&Rs and managers are meant to weed them out…while I’m all for personal responsibility for bands (yes, do your own bookkeeping. No, I don’t care for checking your bank balance for you), there’s some things I think they should be allowed to stay away from, so they can just focus on being a band. But when you get to this point in a band’s career – ie no potential massive advance to take a commission on – even a lot of the good people aren’t interested.
I still don’t have time to manage them, nor quite the burning desire that takes over my WHOLE ENTIRE SOUL when I really want to do something. But hopefully I’ll be able to help them out here and there along the way, and in my indie idealistic way I feel like that’s part of what’s missing from music – some kind of sense of camaraderie, we’re all in it together, helping folks out even though there’s no money in it for you. Where’s the humanity without that?
…and to be really cynical, people buy into humanity, don’t they? It’s a great marketing tool.
