That was a bit of a day.
The iTunes Festival is on throughout July at the ICA in London. Lovely lovely venue. There are a lot of established acts playing (Paul McCartney to name but one) every night of the month and it’s being filmed for Channel 4, recorded for iTunes and broadcast on Xfm/Capital (well, some of them anyway). GoodBooks were supporting Editors last night there.
It’s a funny set up because all of the tickets are free and given out to fans of the headline band – so after a hectic day (post office closures/broken amplifiers/free clothes/buying black sheets all part of it) the band played to a room a quarter full in a venue they’d nearly sold out themselves two months ago. Jamie from the ICA told me beforehand that they’d had that problem with Loney, Dear last week too, and that iTunes were trying to sort it out. It didn’t help our situation that the band were told to go on at 7.30pm, 15 minutes before we’d been told and therefore told everyone – including our record company! I had to run out as they started to tell Ollie that they were on, and then leave the venue (no reception there. The only bad thing about the place!) to call our marketing guy Chris. But it all came good in the end – the band played brilliantly and all looked great, the lights were ace and the three trumpeters we got to play in Passchendaele were fantastic too (thanks chaps).
Afterwards I watched some of Editors – great live band – and then discovered ‘the green room’, which had a bizarre ceiling like a water bed, a massive freezer full of little tubs of ice cream, and a nice fridge which came in use because we’d finished the rider. I introduced myself and the band to Ged, Sony BMG UK’s Chairman, who as yet hasn’t seen GoodBooks live (and missed both bands last night) and is apparently embarrassed about it. Given that they’re the best new band on his label (yeah, I went there. Gash, gash, and kind of all right, to name but three) he probably should be. Anyway, despite my waryness towards major label chairmen we had a good chat, partly about blogs and how Ged thinks there’s no reason not to be honest or transparent in writing them. Which bodes well for my Ali Love criticism, then. That aside, I think honesty should be true for all levels of the industry – too much of music is sort of shrouded in this mystery and people not wanting to share tactics or secrets or whatever. GoodBooks – probably me as well – went through a phase of treating music like a competition in terms of “beating” other bands and it took a lot for us all to get out of that way of thinking. There aren’t a finite number of successful bands and talking about how to make good ones successful shouldn’t feel like you are always watching your back.
Still, there’s politics involved, and for every manager who’d carry an amp home from Finsbury Park on the bus at 11pm for their keyboard player (that would be me, then) there’s others in the team who have other acts to focus on too – I guess it’s all about reaching the top of their pile. And that sort of is a competition. Bloody hell. I’m not sure where I’m going with this…
Tonight GoodBooks are at the Buffalo Bar so I’m headed down there in a bit. Fingers crossed it’ll all go to plan. I am going to drive there so that I don’t drink, because when open fridges and aftershows are involved the next day always seems a little fuzzy.
I want to test out this videos thing, so here is the video for Passchendaele by GoodBooks. The single is out next week. Preorder?
Technorati: iTunes Festival, Passchendaele, GoodBooks, Editors, Ged Doherty, Sony BMG, ICA
