It would be great to see an artists definition of this, ‘What does make a great album’? I’m thinking belief, talent, commitment with a dash of reality and an understanding that no matter how good you think it is you need to leave it at the mercy of others to make that final decision. If your manager, should you have one doesn’t like it then if he doesn’t say so what’s the point of having them as your manager? The record company then would be the first to stand up and offer their opinions and here’s where it’s changed, would of!  There were times an A and R person could be driven to tears going down to a studio to hear the end result from a band they’d signed, and feeling visibly moved. And more than likely they’d matched the producer with that artist. Had it worked? He/she was the proudest person on earth, all the hard work to get to this stage and now the anticipation of finally hearing it. More often than not they’d be down the studio intermittently during recordings to see how things were developing and eagerly awaiting the final playback. And the artist couldn’t wait to show them what they’d come up with. THAT”S what made a great album, people sensing greatness, always wanting it but never knowing if or when it might come. But it was enough to keep them striving for it. Part of being great is knowing you can be great.

I’d love to have the opportunity to ask people like Roger Waters or Dave Gilmour from The Pink Floyd, ‘What did it feel like when you were recording Dark Side of the Moon?’ Did they know they were creating history or did that come later? Was there any time in the studio they thought, ‘Oh my God!’ Maybe one day I’ll get the chance to ask them, I’d love to know. Was there that moment in the studio when they were listening back to it when they thought, ‘Fuck!’

Likely they’d all be together at the studio listening back to it, band , record company, manager and maybe even their publisher. I know how I felt as a kid just waiting for a new album by some of my heroes. I’m thinking as an artist you cared, you took pride in your work, you didn’t want to let people down. After all it’s your audience that put you there and they have a right to judge you on merit, you set your own standards. Was it as good as your last album and if it wasn’t could it be that maybe it’s just a change of direction, would it grow on you? If you’d made a great record were you really great, could you sustain that greatness or had you had your moment? Whatever it was it still kept you hungry and wanting whether you recorded it or you bought it.

As we discussed before and we’ll ponder over again no doubt, where is the drive and the ambition? Do you make a record knowing that not many people will buy it, does it affect how you go about making it? If that’s the case then give it away, just make sure you give it away to enough people to find out what they think of you. That’s if you care, because if you don’t care then don’t expect anyone else to. So many basic human ingredients are infectious, they rub off on you. If you’re passionate enough about something and are sincere people buy in to it. It’s easy and you know why? It’s because you’re not trying to convince people, it’s there and it’s natural. And you mean it. You’re exposed for what you are, just someone being themselves, behaving naturally. People feel comfortable and relaxed about you and interested.  Be real to see for yourself if you are real and let others decide for themselves if you are real. Real artists can believe they can make great records. Do we have enough?

Wal-Mart = Record store killer

You admired those artists and what they had and if you had a bit of that talent you thought you stood a chance. It was worth giving it a go and at least if it didn’t happen it wasn’t the end of the world, you’d given it your best shot. You never needed to look back and think, ‘what if’? What if I hadn’t tried, I might have never known if I could have made it. Hope came from inspiration and even if you were down on your luck something might trigger that dream and you’d go and spend your last thirty  pounds or dollars on a guitar. It was worth it. Do people do that anymore, do they  believe enough or have they been so brainwashed by  an industry that doesn’t believe enough in itself?  The industry is accepting of the fact that music doesn’t sell anymore and they’re looking for new revenue streams to claw on to anything they can. And yet they chose their own burial grave, they even bought up all the lots as year after year they didn’t seem concerned that independent records stores were closing. The first port of call for their new artists was disappearing around them and instead of reaching out to help they increased their discounts to Walmart and anyone else who’d buy in bulk. Never mind that they only bought a few titles, it was quick cash. Talk about biting off the hand that fed them for decades, they didn’t given a toss about the independent retailers who’d done as much as anyone to break their biggest selling artists. Where did they think they came from, Walmart?

Today's Music... Digital... what about the rest of it?

So what does drive the people making the music nowadays? Are they too accepting that there is a depressing reality in how many records they can sell? I suppose so, records and selling don’t go hand in hand anymore. Physical product doesn’t sell whoever you are with the odd one off exceptions to the rule like Susan Boyle and we all know where she came from. And furthermore will she be selling records in five years? Somehow I think not  and quite probably the novelty will have worn thin. There have been opera singers since before Elvis, they have always been there. So X Factor found a woman who sang opera OK, so what? They found an ordinary person singing opera, does that makes her extraordinary? She didn’t invent it, where’s the X for factors sake?  And all the Italians in flowing robes learned to sing mighty fine,  they didn’t need a talent show. And in the UK Russell Watson became big a decade ago so still nothing remotely novel or Xy about Susie girl. Funny how we used to do OK for talent before we had talent shows. We had a way to discover music but it started with an interest in it in the first place. Artists were interested in being heard and the public was keen to listen. Today they just don’t care and interest doesn’t even compare to passion. When did we last hear people being passionate about music. They have more passion for a pair of shoes!

Digressed a little there so more to come but that’ll do for today’s episode.

The band are taking plenty of flack for the carbon emissions from taking this gargantuan beast on the road and you can understand why. Personally though, I believe  The Edge when he says they will offset that carbon footprint in some way. They’d probably already thought about it long before all the knives came out.  Unfortunately at around the same time he bought 156 acres on a cliff in Malibu overlooking the Pacific Ocean to build an eco friendly  home. Well five in fact, his own 10,000 square foot palace and another four to flog. Nice work if you can get it! He does want to make it his main homestead though and having seen the place I think I would too! Needless to say the activists came out in force stating that to build whatever he was building they would need to flatten a part of the cliff to build an access road.

No matter what anyone says about U2, whether it’s the new album, the carbon non friendly size of the tour or anything else for that matter the one thing you can’t ignore is the experience almost every single person who attends the show takes home. For them it’s worth every penny. U2 bring them a happiness that a lot of other bands don’t and for them it’s the best night of their lives. Paul McGuinness  has been quoted as saying they don’t break even until the back end of the US tour so you cannot argue about their desire to give people an experience second to none. The Edge on the edge. Of a cliff.

I don’t think the tour will have a significant effect on their record sales either and I’m sure they know that better than anyone. Their motivation will be their desire (no pun intended) to give something back to the people who have stuck with them forever, it’ll be trying to let them experience something unique, something completely different…….to anything. Add to that the corporate, footballer world flocking to the U2 show as the place to be seen and we have ‘the event’. It’s kinda funny too, what about those who haven’t seen a live show before? Where do they go from here, anything is going to seem sub standard after Claw Wars!

And where do U2 go from here, the return of The Claw? I don’t think so , it won’t be anywhere other than rest for a while and I think we can all allow them that indulgence! But what next, where can you go. Personally I think it’ll be stripped right down and four guys will take their songs to the masses. U2 have reached such a level now that being the ‘hottest ticket’ they could do anything. They’ve earned it. They haven’t earned it because of a gigantic claw and a production of epidemic proportion, they earned it from 30 plus years on the road. They’ve earned it from playing every tiny club that wanted to book them to every fan who wanted to see them. They’ve earned it from signing every autograph for every one of those fans who believed in them enough to give them a chance to do this. And through it all they stuck at it. They posed for every picture with every fan no matter how exhausted they were after giving their all in a performance, and for many years to under a hundred people and not a hundred thousand. They stepped out front to meet and greet the fans for as long as it was safe to do so. They paid their dues, they have earned it.

For me U2, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Bruce or Led Zeppelin don’t have to prove anything to me or anyone else. They earned it, damn right they earned it. It’s called a work ethic and it’s called graft. Blood, sweat and tears. It’s called taking chances and making mistakes and it’s called entertainment. It isn’t about any one tour, it’s about understanding why you came in to this business and giving people something they have earned. The opportunity to take their hard earned cash and spend it how they want to. And if that is on two hours of a thrill of a lifetime who are we to judge?  When entertainers get this big let’s not lose site of the fact that they are still meant to entertain. It’s what they do and it’s what they should always do.

Much as I want to promote this I want to start writing my next one, it’s a killer and the sooner I get started then the sooner I’ll be able to bleat on about it and get repetitive. All I’m saying is that it will involve a whole host of colleagues from over the years.

I will have my You Tube channel up and running by weekend, it’s registered and it’s going to be called TM TV. It’ll be full and feisty and fun at the same time. Got lots of ideas on content.

The plan was to release the book early in the New Year and set it up properly, but I don’t do properly very well so we’ve arrived at a compromise. There’s going to be a limited edition number of copies until the full launch, all signed. I sign them and send you a pencil and you write the number of copy on it. And when you go on holiday you take your book with you and you ask the person next to you on the plane what number theirs is then same again when you get to the hotel. Guests, receptionist, concierge, the lot of them. How else will you know the full value of what you own? If you find someone with the same numbered book send them both in and you get a refund, payable with 10/16  weeks.

Call it marketing. Well call it what you want, like I care?

Lots more to say but as they say in showbiz, I have a deadline. I have to get all my relevant press pack and some more together.

I won’t be able to avoid ranting on about it because the truth is that as a novice I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, so much in fact that I’m not stopping here. I’ll probably get wrapped up in Twitter and uptweet current info as it seems all the craze.

What’s it about? Well it’s about me, what did you expect it to be about! Here’s an excerpt from the intro that I condensed down from War and Peace length. I needed a long intro because I’ve got wear a lot of T shirts and I have a lot to say. I’ve mapped out the internet cafes along the beach and, ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish.’

Here’s a sneak preview, sneak away

It still wasn’t enough, I want to write a book that I’d read. I want it to include some stories, be entertaining, have humour but I want there to be something people could learn from the stories. I wanted them to benefit and to learn as I had learned from the people I had worked with.

I wanted them to see the mistakes these people had made, the opportunities that came their way and the pivotal moments that had both motivated and inspired me. I wanted them to see that no matter who you are, shit happens!

Difficult but challenging, I definitely was on a mission now. How long should it be, what should I cover, what will I call it? I was starting to feel invincible now, I’d made the decision, I’m writing a book! I started to think about the cover. What should it be?

That’s it! …it’ll have me on the cover in a Super hero costume, maybe ‘Shitman.’

I scribbled some more notes and identified the things I wanted to cover, one page, two pages. There was too much, time to prioritize.

There may be more, let’s see how we do with this first. It has to begin, at the beginning. It has to introduce me from my childhood to my adulthood but we need to cover my in between hood because my in between hood was good.

The Manchester Poly show was a good one for U2. Wylie had pulled a few fans down from Liverpool and there was a presentable local turnout so they got to play in front of a good few people which is more than can be said for the next time they played Manchester, upstairs in a pub in Shudehill, I think maybe it was the Beach Club. There were 9 people there, three of whom were with me! The band soundchecked around 9pm and people were starting to leave thinking that was it. We had to drag them back and tell them they weren’t on til 11pm. Maybe there were only 7 left when they finally played but U2 being as they are played like it was a full house. They always did that right from the very start. Everyone who came, no matter how small a crowd were treated to a full show, no exceptions. I think out of everyone I ever saw and most certainly everyone I ever worked with they had a very special bond with their audience. They never lost that, everyone who saw them then still goes to see them now, plus maybe a few others!

After the show had finished we stuck our heads behind to say hello. The band were very excited because Mark Radcliffe the local DJ was there and they were keen to hear what he thought. We both remember them as being very personable, polite and just thrilled to meet everyone and anyone they could, Bono especially. He always wanted to get out front as soon as posssible and meet the fans. It wasn’t long before he knew some of them by name.

I also remember after every show he would always say ‘How was it, what did you think?’ They’d always sit around after gig and have a band meeting so they sort of knew the answer but always asked those who mattered most, the fans. Tonight they were asking us and we said we enjoyed it, because we had. In his perpetual quest to grab the audience’s attention Bono had grabbed on to some pipes directly above him on stage and had been swinging from them. They were central heating pipes and his hands were red raw. Wrapped up in the moment he probably hadn’t noticed at the time but we certainly had.

Having had a good night and met the boys we said our farewells and left. It was pissing down with rain outside so we made a dash for the car, or at least where we thought we’d left the car. Gone, the damn thing had been stolen and we stood there cursing in the rain. We headed back and in to the gig to call the police and report it, more for the insurance than any likelyhood of ever getting it back. The band were still out front talking to the audience and Bono and The Edge, followed closely by Adam and Larry a couple of moments later came over to ask why we were back.

My lasting memories of the show were of Mark cursing the theft of his car, ‘Fookin bastards, I’ll kill ‘em if I ever get hold of ‘em,’ blah blah and these young Irish kids showing so much concern and listening intently. Bless!

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 clutch on to dawn for as long as possible. It’s those times when the sun is gloriously rising and that time at the end of the day when it is reluctant to fade that are positively magical and the time writing becomes more than a hobby, it’s a passion, something you HAVE to do. It’s true what they say, the best things in life are free. What price could you put on a sunrise or a sunset when no two are alike?

I wake up excited with this bizarre need to share things, maybe it’s the escape of living on your own and sharing a coffee with a complete stranger that makes blogging so wonderful.  It never feels like it’s an obligation and it’s obviously a great way for those that don’t know you to find out a little more and a must when you want to talk to people as well as write. I’m still really excited about going around and storytelling, what a great way to remember some amazing times and to share them with others. And with some who weren’t even born then. Scary.

The colors cascade in to morn and it all becomes a frantic stab at the keybpad to write as much as is going on in my head, made a thousand times harder by a laptop that just decides to stop when it’s had enough. Technology telling you to slow down. It’s so abrupt, it’ll just tap out the letters I typed when it feels like it! By which time you’ve had pause, and not for thought. It could lead to another tirade of expletives about the death of my laptop but I’ll refrain, it was behaving badly before but it’s sod’s law that I should inherit it’s brother, albeit temporarily.

How the little things excite you the most, I can’t wait to get a new one and maybe come up with my best work yet, or knowing me drop it in a puddle and end of back at square one! Back to my train of thought with what next to blog, which never ends where it begins.

Thinking further and deeper about the fans that were the music business of old reminded me once more of the people who worked in the record stores, and again when I first read Smith3000’s blog about Sifter’s which really stirred it all up for me, made me sort of mad thinking what happened to all these people. I suppose the truth is, selling records went over to the supermarkets and the Walmarts of the world. Record companies giving them discounts that they weren’t offering to the indie stores, the ones who were brave enough to stock those records when no one had a clue who the artists were. Nice payback. Then the supermarkets held the industry to ransom, if they had any overstocks they forced the major record companies to take them back or else they wouldn’t order in such volume next time. What that would mean is that the record companies wouldn’t reach target on new releases, and people might lose jobs. Result, the multiple record retailers 1 Record Companies 0. No equalizer, no extra time.

More than any other sector it was the people in the stores who had the real zest for music.Just to be able to be surrounded by vinyl and have the opportunity to listen to and discover new bands was enough for this lot, kids in a sweetshop. No matter what time of day I would go in to a record store there was always something on the turntable and invariably something that would stop me in my tracks and force me to ask the question, ‘What the hell is this?’

Record stores employed enthusiasts, before you were ‘allowed ‘ to work there you had to pass the test.Did you love music, how much did you know, were you able to answer the questions the customers might have? That’s what brought people back in to the shops, someone who was knowledgable and could point them in the right direction, someone who might suggest they listen to this new release and could answer any queries. That’s exactly the type of people who worked in One Stop records in Manchester, my first foray in to record buying and there before HMV who were later to become my designated supplier when sadly, One Stop closed their doors. After that it was the very wonderful Record Collector in Sheffield, one of THE stores who’s owner became a good friend to this day.