Once the jury was out and back with the verdict then time to put the wheels in motion. Was it good enough? If all were agreed about the finished product the planning would begin. They’d have ideas about a single , they would decide on the order of the tracks and start to engage in constructive planning. Everyone would have some input even before they planned the planning! It was driven by enthusiasm and an air of excitement. There was anticipation. How long since people sensed that? As Tom Petty said ‘the waiting is the hardest part.’ We’d have to wait, however long it took but it never mattered. If you are prepared to wait then it means it’s worth waiting for, right?. Your sheer love for music allowed you to do that.
And then there was the eagerness to get it out and get it heard. We, the pluggers would have our say and would maybe play some key people at radio a couple of songs , get their input. Everyone would run around like kids comparing new toys at Christmas. You’d create a buzz without even trying, a real buzz. Regularly we’d talk about other people’s records, I always thought it was the best form of promotion if you had someone else talking about the records you were promoting. If you gave a record plugger from another company a record you were promoting you knew the next time you saw them they’d have heard it and they’d then tell you what they thought. We all shared the same common interest, we loved music.
And the fans did too, they loved talking about it as well as listening to it and if you heard something you liked then you would want to share that with others and pass it on. It was viral marketing in it’s infancy and before the web. Chances are that if your friends liked it they would be out at the first available opportunity buying it for themselves. A tape? Bollocks to that we all wanted our own copy!
Maybe the artist wanted it so much more then, they saw creating great new music as the ultimate challenge because they knew there was an audience out there begging for it. The music industry has always been a place where you wash your dirty laundry in public. If you release an inferior product somewhere else, in fashion, a new range of kitchen appliances, new trainers etc all that happens is it doesn’t sell. People don’t go around critiquing it and talking about it but when your next album isn’t as good as your last everyone knows. There’s an outcry. If you’re disappointed then again it only shows you care enough.
So where are we now? If the public aren’t buying and the record companies aren’t signing then have the artists given up trying? Is everyone to blame for what has happened to the music industry? Has it gone the way of shipbuilding and cotton, was it a once a great place to be and now merely a shadow of it’s former self? Have the good old days gone and do we need to accept that however it evolves in whatever way it just won’t ever recapture the excitement and give us that adrenalin rush we all got from being a spectator or an insider?
Is all we have left, memories?
