Engine Room Insights

Great as it was seeing U2 for the first time the same cannot be said for Adam’s hair. It was bad, the type that you’d imagine not belonging to a head but more as a shock treatment demo and on the end of a pole in a neuro surgeon’s treatment room. It was a harsh [...]

The decision made, Mark called the Polytechnic in Manchester and we were added to the guest list. Having your lodger on the radio back then was a major plus and saved us a fortune in gigs! I think the social secretary at the Poly was a guy called Elliot Rashman who later went on to manage Simply Red, [...]

I remember the first time I heard about U2 was from my old friend Neil Storey at Island.( Incidentally I’m taking full credit for the boy Storey starting his own blog, Neil Storey/Blogspot which I will link up to as soon as I get enough time from borrowed computers to sort it out and so you can read [...]

Today the artists are doing what the record companies can longer do , or have no desire to do, build careers. It involves work, hard work by dedicated people and there used to be a word for it, artist development.(OK two words) But you still never hear it mentioned anymore by record companies. It gave [...]

I came across this when I was just checking on a few dates before writing a blog. I was trying to remember the exact date I first saw U2 supporting Wah Heat at the Polytechnic in Manchester with my then lodger Mark Radclifffe.
David Fricke had just written a review of the re issue of U2’s first album, [...]

Back catalogue has always been the very soul of the record business, great artists make great records and great records sell. And like any art form, it doesn’t date. Over the years new generations discover them and they continue to sell, it’s a never ending circle, or at least you thought it was. While [...]

‘I peak early in the morning. it’s downhill from there.’ not my own quote but something Bono said in 2004.
I was up as usual at the crack of dawn, well actually it was a crack well before before dawn. I live in Tampa Bay on the breathtaking coastline that is the Gulf of Mexico so I [...]

So we identified the problem, the record business had the experience because of the people who worked there, and slowly they started to dwindle.  The record business was losing ‘record people’ and they were being replaced by the accountants and lawyers. The old guard were the innovators and the risk takers, they were the people [...]

We have a plan, podcasts. Seems I am of mouthaplenty so my friend Darrin from the Innovation Hangar here in the bay of Tampa  is about to resurrect all things TM. Should be a lot of fun, they’ll be a myriad of stories, some whacky, others unbelievable but non of them dull I hope. Well [...]

Onwards and upwards in the perpetual quest to borrow someones laptop and get something up here, there’s never having time to read other blogs and a mountain of catching up to do. I think I’m being tested, while I survive? Damn right I will. Oh but for the day I can curl up to my new laptop and [...]