Superbowl Superboss

Tampa is awash with Superbowlites, they’re everywhere and all to see the men with big shoulders running around shouting until eventually throwing an odd shaped ball out of the ground. Everyone jumps up, play stops……. and an entire new team runs on. I don’t understand American football and I don’t think I ever will.

Nevertheless it’s popular. The adds run at $3 million for a 30 second commercial and sadly they were all booked pre recession……$100,000 per second! Rhianna played the other night, The Eagles last night, there’s Fleetwood Mac, Puff Daddy, whoops P.Diddy who turned up in St Pete early this morning for a party. Snoop is snooping around, it’s all going on. Meanwhile I’m checking out Fox Soccer Channel and I think Wigan on the box will do just fine, no problem…..leave ‘em all to paaaaaaaaarty.

…….Oh and then of course there’s The Boss, the man who knows about as much about the game as me, Bruce Springsteen. He’s turned it down a million times but Boss times are hard and like he boldly admits, he has a new album out. There’s no fee but they’ll cover expenses, nice, him and Patti get a hotel room… but then again the audience for his 12 minute half time show is a billion! No need for a sweat drenched 3 hour show. Boss move by Boss man. Nice work if you can get it.

Bruce did a press conference on Thursday and no suprise, it was all over everywhere………it was the first he’d done since 1987 and the media lapped it up. Brucey boy seemed in good spirits and I did like his honesty about not being a football fan and wanting to shamlessly plug his new album. One thing both he and Miami Steve said got me thinking. They said they came out of an era when the music was brilliant and the artists set a very high standard……..and they felt it their job to maintain those standards, they wanted to be great. It’s a wonderful philosophy, admire you’re peers but at the same time try and emulate them.

Springsteen has worked relentlesly for several decades to be where he is. He shunned CBS’s (now Sony) hype campaign and the posters that claimed ‘I have seen the future of rock n roll and it is Bruce Springsteen’ He hated it, he demanded they take them all down. As was the case with his heroes and when he was growing up, he wanted to be judged on merit and not some overhyped record company campaign. He was right, he was more than a commodity, he had a vision and he wasn’t prepared to compromise.The artists that have survived are the ones who had a say in their career, they too had a vision and weren’t prepared to stand back and let the record company turn them in to what they thought they should be, and create something that would make their job easier….make them marketable. They had belief and they had guts and if was going to take time then so be it. It worked then but they won’t let it work now, they all watched as everything came tumbling down. They pushed the self destruct button while blaming everyone apart from themselves.They knew it all.

Filed under: Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, record companies , Bruce Springsteen, CBS, Superbowl

Get it together

I’ve been moving furniture around and I’m knackered. I’ve lost half the stuff I put in places to make it easier to find them but I suppose it’s bound to get easier when I eventually do find them……. Nevertheless good things happen and Facebook once more re introduces figures from the past and more glorious memories come flooding back. An old TV pal from many moons ago, Sally located me and we have been exchanging e-mails furiously. As she has now spent more time on my blog than I have she’ll be vital in helping me drag out a few more gems, especially from the great times spent on music television shows.

Sally worked at Granada for a good few years and was there 30 years ago when I managed to get a bunch of Irish kiddies a nice little break. I have to admire them for booking U2 way ahead of anyone else around the time ‘I will follow’ came out. Back then U2 were only getting interviews on specialist radio shows so it was very bold on Granada’s part to stick their necks out and book them, especially on a kid’s show. Not only did they get on TV but the show was broadcast nationally. Looking back at that footage nowadays is incredible and yet so few web sites even list it. We know it exists…we were there. U2 looked so young but then again so did I !!! They were always so grateful for every opportunity, very humble and lapped up the chance to meet the media.They were the perfect band to get on radio or television…you got them on and they did the rest. They made a plugger’s job easy. I’ll get blasted here from Sal if I’m wrong but the show was ‘Get it together’ presented by one of the world’s most famous owls, ‘Ollie Beak.’ The show’s producer was Muriel Young, a lovely lady who sadly passed away a few years ago but someone who I can still picture vividly. She came out of an era in television, the 60’s where some of the most amazing bands passed through their doors. I missed that one professionally (yes, too young!) but still had my radio and TV there to give me the most amazing education.

Television back in the 70’s , especially music television which was where I was hovering was littered with the best bunch of people you could ever hope to meet. I made some great friends there. If you loved music and worked in television you were allowed to work on music programmes……..whoever thought up that recipe deserves a medal, music people for music televsion. Then again the same could be said of record pluggers, we loved music so all day you were exchanging stories, talking about great new records that had come out, booking bands on to shows, doing the work and having great fun at the same time. TV researchers trusted you and no matter how much I wanted to get my bands on to TV I prided myself on never trying to force stuff on them that clearly wasn’t right for the show. There were other places to book other bands so why even try to get an act on a show that wouldn’t be right for their audience anyway, what’s the point?

Filed under: Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, PR, record companies , get it together, Granada TV, music television

A new dawn

So today it all begins. Much as I am delighted to see Obama take the helm it’s just as exciting to see George Bush going. I’ll never understand how he got re elected though….one mistake you can condone but to ask him to come back and do it all over again is a little odd. Could you ever expect to see two so opposite people? Obama is a brilliant speaker, articulate, intelligent, passionate and above all believable…. and George Bush isn’t. Watching the build up to the inauguration is amazing, people are starting to believe again, something that has sadly gone in a world clouded in doom and gloom. We need today and we need it bad.

January has been a fairly miserable start to the year with more job losses and more still to come and today is going to energize us all. I was pleased to see that all the music industry people and comments on Facebook are all pro Obama so let’s hope that optimism shines through our industry. The music industry could do well to practice what the new President preaches, all of us working together, rallying round to help make it happen. In an industry as fragmented as the music industry has become we need direction, we need something to inspire and motivate. Record companies used to have belief in their artists, the belief that they had what it took and with that came the hope to succeed. Politics or music it’s all the same, you have to believe in your ability to make it happen.

With hope will come opportunities and we’ll need to be ready for those opportunities, we’ll need to be prepared. I think that’s all anyone can ever hope for, to be given the opportunity and to be just given that chance. Too many have had too many disappointments for too long now. There is no consolation no matter how bad things get when you look over your shoulder and see people losing their homes, their jobs and most all their dignity. All people who were once proud have taken the slings and arrows and deserve more. So much has so little to do with them yet they suffer the injustices. Seems wrong that George Bush could drag America through so much of a mess and walk back to the safe haven that is his world, no cash flow problems, business as usual, oblivious to what we alll have to deal with. And he didn’t even get made redundant, he retired!

It’s a mad mad world where those that create the mess, whether it be politics, banking, insurance etc walk away unscathed, even with bonuses!…… and yet others lose so much.

Here’s to the new boss……….not the same as the old boss. Not even close.

Filed under: Opportunity, View from the room , Obama, George Bush

Play the music, Mr DJ

Although the record companies had music people working there they were not alone, people who were in to music were employed at all levels. If they liked music they wanted to find somewhere where they could indulge their passion and get paid at the same time. Their spare time was going to concerts, it was never seen as something they had to do just something they were grateful they could do……to them getting in free was incredible, they would only have spent their wages on doing that if they were somewhere else anyway.The people I knew in local radio were a classic example, there would rarely be a gig I attended that one, or more likely several of my media buddies wouldn’t attend.

Everyone I knew then who worked in radio were fans of both music and radio. They loved the idea of having a good local radio station and wherever possible they reflected that in the music they played. They took far more chances in their programing policy then than ever they could now. They were never going to be too daring but they would certainly play records by new artists if they fitted in to the station’s sound…obviously if they liked Slipnot or some German industrial band they weren’t going to let personal tastes influence them, and lose their jobs at the same time.

Radio station music policy now gives very little room for new artists to receive anything like the amount of exposure they need to get a hit through radio, those days are gone. I remember just before I hung up my plugging boots it would be any excuse not to play a record rather than looking for a reason to…very sad. I heard the same excuses my colleagues in press were getting. Press would say, ‘we need radio’ before we can write about it…………and radio would say ‘we need press before we can play it!!!’ Where the hell is the logic in that, surely someone can be a little adventurous, I wasn’t asking the radio stations to play anything that I didn’t see fitted in with the station sound. How can anyone new stand a chance of having a hit with an attitude like that. When you think of some of the records I promoted were ’safe’ in the eyes of programmers, one example being Natalie Imbruglia and ‘Torn’ It became the biggest airplay single of the time…..and yet it was the first single by a new artist meaning today…..hardly any chance of getting that amount of support.

No risk from radio means no opportunity for new artists. Some people make great radio records, it shouldn’t matter that they are unknown.

Filed under: Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, Risk , airplay, independent local radio, radio station

Tony Wilson, once seen never forgotten.

Part of my brief at Island Records was to try and secure TV performances and video showings of the acts I represented. During my time as a salesman for Transatlantic and ABC Records, I had watched Tony Wilson’s career blossom from aspiring journalist and local news presenter to being pushed to the forefront in Granada TV’s quest to give Top of the Pops, the BBC’s flagship pop show a run for their money….well that was the original plan anyway! Granada’s boss David Plowright was fan of Tony’s and thought he was the man for the job. I agreed with him completely, he was the perfect person to front such a brave challenge, and Granada were the perfect TV company to take on the BBC..

 

Local television and more specifically local news programs weren’t known for championing any type of new or even established music in those days, they were just that, local news…….. but Granada has always been at the forefront when it came to being a little more adventurous. It was they who a decade earlier thought it might be a good idea to put this interesting bunch of Liverpool lads on the box, a parade of moptops called The Beatles……and a guy back then Johnny Hamp took the kind of chance no one would ever dare to today.

 

Tony Wilson to a great many of people in the north west of England was a love, hate type of guy. The first time I saw him on my local news show he made me smile, made me giggle, there was something about him that was entertaining. He was very personable too when he acknowledged me at the Marley show back in 1975. Even back then when celebrity was really only used to describe The Beatles, The Stones and Hollywood I could see how people would leer at him, shout insults and obscenities….he was our own ‘celebrity’ He had a look and a way about him that impressed some and pissed off others.  Certain characters would make a point of pulling away from their own crowd and go up to him purely to tell him they thought he was crap….why because he was on TV and they weren’t? In fact in knowing Tony for nearly 30 years I can honestly say I never heard anyone say he was OK! If you asked people what they thought of him it would be ‘He’s great, our Toe’ or ‘I hate the bastard’ I think he loved that, the fact that everyone had an opinion about him. He was never ‘Tony who?’ and never should he have been.

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, Risk , About Tony Michaelides, BBC Top of the pops, Granada TV, Island Records, tony wilson

New order….they did it their way

 Preparation and the different ways people prepare themselves is a vital ingredient to making sure something is successful. It’s important that the way individuals prepare themselves, as well as being professional is something that they are comfortable with. Compromise rarely works, certainly in my experience. If a band was invited on to a TV show and asked to mime then, if this wasn’t to their liking I would rather decline the offer than have them appear. It would have been a disaster for all………if a band was doing something under duress they would do it badly anyway.

 

Sometimes bands are adamant and New Order was always the casing example. When asked to do Top of the Pops back in the UK in the early eighties the BBC told them they had to mime…they told them they didn’t have to do anything.

 

Top of the Pops had been the flagship pop program in the UK for many years and were very aware of their importance to the record companies…and in return they were used to doing it their way. The band weren’t being awkward, they just said if they couldn’t do it live they didn’t want to do it at all. No one had ever said this to the BBC, as TOTP was seen as an important component to the continuing success of a record, a vital cog in the promotional wheel. You appeared and the record went up the charts. New Order appeared, played live and the record dropped the following week! Another first for New Order and for Factory….…and another first for Top of the Pops though I’m not so sure they’d be as keen to mention it…. that had never before happened in the history of the show.

 

You have to admire them for it though, Barney the singer said he’d feel stupid miming and I’m with them on that. They have always been a very popular band and sold millions of records but everything they ever did was of their own doing, rarely from any threat from the label. Factory weren’t like that, they tended to sign artists for their integrity, mostly! and in the belief that they would go away and make the record that the public would want. They might suggest things like a producer or someone they might want to meet and possibly work with but if the band didn’t want to do it, then it was fine.

 

I worked for Factory doing their regional promotion from day one and a continuing relationship that lasted ten years. I have very fond memories of Tony Wilson and the first time I met him and then many years later when I told him about promotion and what to do with Blue Monday…. and I’ll talk plenty more on here about that. Factory comprised of some great people both at the label and in the bands, many of whom I am still in touch with. We all went through some very testing times and it was an emotional rollercoaster. They nearly cost me my business when they went bust owing me a considerable amount of money, too much of a hit to take back then and at any time for that matter but I managed, things changed and I survived. More than the money and more than anything I’ll always remember the day they closed the doors at Factory…for ever.

Filed under: Business Lessons, Journey Through The Past, Managing Creativity, Opportunity , BBC, blue monday, Factory Records, New Order, tony wilson, Top of the Pops

Tampa let me here you say YEAH

Good morning all, or good whatever it is wherever you are .As Jimmy Buffet the struggling singer  says…It’s 5 o’clock somewhere….albeit his time zone  is based on opening times and where the rum runs freely.

 

Had a lovely evening last night and met the people from Tampa Bay Digital who were really nice and so hospitable. They have a wonderful set up down there and some pretty cool studios….even though we recorded the show in the Brewing Company across the way.  It was my first soiree in to talking to Tampa’s people so thank you for the opportunity and to Media Talk’s host, Janet for not kicking my heels when I talked too much. It should be up on You Tube over the next few days so I’ll let you know.(www.tampadigital.com)  I also met another guest Megan, equally as lovely and personable as the others and I’ve just had a peep at her blog ,as I awoke at this ridiculous hour. (artsqueeze.com) Great to see she’s passionate about her city and the arts. I’ll be back to revisit some more when the eyes are fully open. Why does bed throw me out at such unsavory hours? It’s the pillow saying ‘Enough now T, go write’ How can your bed, the one thing you look forward to after a long day be so unkind? We’ve been together so long.

 

It’s hard been an ageing rock and roller. I’m writing all these insights from the engine room down everyday and yet while I’m sitting there sipping my diet coke and waiting for my interview I’m thinking…I really need to play the part here, I’ll give it a couple of minutes then I’ll hurl a TV monitor through the window, body pop on the floor.

I wanted to wear my Van Halen wig and Ted Nugent lion cloth but Michelle and Peter, the sanity in the show prevent me from such indulgences. Damn, 30 years in rock and roll and the only thing worrying me was the time I was on air I was missing the sunset.

 

It made me realize how much I’ve missed meeting people how my hermit days are over. So many nice people I’m meeting that I thought I might walk around the streets later and introduce myself ,maybe invite myself round for dinner. Maybe cook for them if they’d let me talk. I’m down to Studio 620 in downtown St Pete on Monday 6^th too for a talk, an informal laid back…….sit down, shut up and listen. Let me tell you a story…..seriously though I’m really looking forward too it, a few Q and A’s in there and see what others want to hear.

 

The time has come for the show to take to the road. We’re just polishing up the chrome on the tour bus, wardrobe should be ready with the costumes by the end of the week and just checking to see if Michael Phelps is happy to do some synchronized swimming and be the support. We needed something a little different.

 

Madison Square Gardens  are just looking to move Bon Jovi to another venue because Thursday is my favorite day of the week and I need to perform then and only then. All in all we’re set up quite well.

 

Still a little pissed off Bruce got the half time slot at the Super bowl though.

 

 

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Opportunity , art squeeze, jimmy buffet, media talk, studio 620, tampa digital, tony michaelides

Innovation, education…to plug or not to plug, that is the question

 

Fancy getting paid to go and blabber to someone about music, finish, and then go down the road and do it all over again. It seemed an easy enough way to make a living, and maybe the right time for me to move from sales to promotion anyway. Once I made the decision there was a whole new opportunity in front of me. All the relationships I had built up in the retail sector meant nothing, I now had to go and do it all over again. What I had learned from working in sales however, was vital to my communication skills. I had met a bunch of great people, now I was hoping I would meet a bunch more….but I wanted to write the script.

 

We really did make it up as we went along. I don’t remember any formal training at Island Records, I didn’t take an exam, I don’t have a ‘BA Plug’. I and others like me were employed because it was deemed we were the type of people who could get the job done. Most of what else happens is what you make happen. It’s not really like being a mechanic…….if someone doesn’t teach you how to fix a set of brakes then someone might drive off a cliff, or if your bath malfunctions you may drown. There are basic principles in trades, and you need know the basics to fix the job. Working in the music industry is about who you know as much as what you know, nothing happens until you build relationships………and building relationships takes time.

 

None of us went to any music school, nobody taught us. What for when we had the opportunity to learn from real record people, people like Chris Blackwell, Ahmet Ertegun, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. What you learn from music industry courses depends on how innovative that school is. While a teacher may think they know how to teach music business…….  I think you need to have real world education and be taught be people who’ve been there and done it. An academic in the music industry is a recipe for disaster.  Teaching and working with artists are a million miles apart.

 

You can’t teach an artist anything, they are creative people. You need to understand that person and what you need to do to help them be creative. Tell them what to do and you may as well go and look for another job. No teacher could ever have taught me what I learned from my education in the music business. If I was around someone who’d been there and done it, someone who played a part in my initiation to music as a record buyer I was attentive and receptive to their ever word. I wanted to learn from their experiences. You don’t want to be them but you are inspired by what they have done and strive for that level of accomplishment. My mentors were my vision of where I wanted to go.

 

That pedigree of music industry person no longer exists and has a lot to do with why the industry has declined.  These people and others like them, made the music industry a better place to be.

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Business Lessons, Innovation, Journey Through The Past, Managing Creativity, Opportunity , Add new tag, Ahmet Ertegun, building relationships, Chris Blackwell, Herb Alpert, Innovation, Island Records, Jerry Moss, music education, plugging records

Get up, stand up..Creative Failure

 You would never think two words like creativity and failure would go together at all, but they do. ‘Fail’ always sounds such an extreme word, so final……….when most of the time failure is just the beginning to success. It might not be success with the first thing you ever attempt but it’s the experience you gain from failure that will help you to succeed

 

I have valued most everything I ever went in to as an adventure, an exercise in knowledge and experience. Of course some bring you heartache at the time, but if I didn’t think I had learned from that experience I would never try anything again, would I?  I never questioned my decision in trying something. Once I made the decision to go for it then I just set out to make it a success. Some of the things that might happen along the way may be out of your control but still, that’s a lesson too. Sometimes it can be as simple as ‘wrong time’ That’s Ok. Next time just make sure it’s the right time. Failure comes from risk, just as opportunity and success do. It’s always the right decision…provided you move forward from the experience.

 

Most successful people have failed, and many of them several times. You don’t think successful people fail…..but they do…. the difference is they don’t see it as failure, more something of value. With some there is a stigma attached to failure, they see it as embarrassment. That should never be the case. Where is the shame in taking a risk, in showing that you are prepared to take that chance? I personally think it is the opposite and that people who take risks are admired, certainly in business. The greatest the risk can mean the greater the reward.

 

When I first met Simon Cowell in the early 90’s he was 30, he’d been bankrupt twice and was living with his parents. That stopped you in your tracks didn’t it! You would never equate Simon Cowell with failure but he has seen failure as much as anyone. What makes him special is his ability to get up, dust himself down and make sure whatever went wrong doesn’t happen again. He has had failures but still doesn’t accept the meaning of the word, they’re more setbacks, a bit of a nuisance! He shows great character and resilience and has that determination to make things work. Obviously it’s a lot easier now for him with money in the bank, but he still does it at the risk of failure. He still sees opportunities there and he wants to take them. He hardly needs the money, but he relishes the challenge.

 

Simon was always an entertaining character. When I used to promote his records when he was at BMG he would drive me mad at times. I’d have these conversations with him and try to explain why people didn’t play records by glove puppets like Zig and Zag or ‘The Power Rangers’ but he still would insist they were hits. ‘Yes’ I’d say ‘but it won’t be down to me getting them played!’ You just gave up in the end and agreed to disagree. Simon’s big break came from a couple of actors in the UK and a cover version of the Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained melody’ It became the biggest selling record of the year but to most people they were just a couple of good looking guys with a popular TV show, certainly not singers. Simon Cowell spent months and months persuading them to make a record, offering them ludicrous sums of money until eventually they relented, like we all did but without the cash!

Filed under: Business Lessons, Managing Creativity, Opportunity, Risk , Add new tag, BMG, creative failure, creativity, failure, Risk, smon cowell, tony michaelides

What’s the frequency,T?

 REM had released their critically acclaimed album , Murmur and I was fortunate enough to have Mike Mills and Peter Buck in the studio, great guys but a long way off being famous……..All the time in the world and no promo person dragging them off for the next jaunt of their radio tour. ‘Here to chill’ was their motto, and that suited me, be my guest…… And they were just that, very chilled but also very chatty…..in fact that reminds me someone bootlegged it and I think and it’s out there somewhere called’ Shiny chatty people’ if I’m not mistaken.

 

They virtually took over the whole show. In fact they were much better disc jockeys than me, probably still are. They were playing Manchester the following night and they came up the night before specially to sit in on the whole of my Sunday night show. When moments like that happen in radio you treasure them, they’re wonderful.  Just two decent blokes here for a good time…….well me as well, I was a decent bloke too!

 

I was impressed at how at ease they were with promoting themselves. Looking at them with my promotion head on they were exactly the type of artist you dream of working with. A plugger can get them in to a radio station but then it’s down to the artist. You give them that opportunity and they either go about building a nice fan base of media people…..  radio, TV, press… wherever, or they screw it up by being an asshole.

 

Peter Buck grabbed the mike just as I was about to link in to the midnight news…’This is Peter Buck , you’re listening to me Peter Buck and Mike Mills and this is Tony the Greek’s Last Radio Program here on fabulous Piccadilly Radio and…… it’s the wiiiiiiiitching hour’ The look on the newsreader’s face was priceless. I think she was used to precisely timed slick links in to the news and here we were just fooling around and having some fun……..well it was probably a lot better than she’d have got from me, he sounded pretty good actually.  

 

I remember how much I loved their early albums where Michael Stipe’s voice so far back in the mix it gave it quite an ethereal sound. It sounded almost like an ‘embarrassed’ vocal from a lead singer…… I’m the singer but I’m shy. I’ll sing but I don’t want you to hear me. I wondered what type of a lead singer he wanted to be….after all he didn’t lead in a way lead singers usually do… aren’t they supposed to do just that, lead?  But apart from that, what was producer Mitch Easter thinking……why didn’t he bring the vocal up, why couldn’t we hear what was he singing about? Naturally that voice evolved and became very identifiable over the years, and it was a pretty damn fine voice too but back then it gave the band a very different sound. Radio free Europe wasn’t too bad though come to think of it, you could hear Stipe and what he was singing about. One of my favorites though and a song I played a lot was Pretty persuasion. A classic.

 

Some of the best moments I had doing my show was when we had people come in. Again it was the not knowing what could happen that excited us all. A little bit of risk and we could all roll with it. If I was an artist I think I would have preferred that type of show also. I used to feel quite sorry for them at times when they were out on gruelling promotional tours when they’d clearly rather be a home.You drive 200 miles to do an interview with someone, you back hurts, you’re hungry tired and irritable and the first question  you get is ‘Tell us about the album then, are you pleased with it’

 

Actually I have just remembered a gem from way back when. ….I took Pat and Greg Kane who were twin brothers and had their band Hue and Cry in to do an interview with a ‘Hey, I’m a DJ, come love me’ type at a radio station in Newcastle, all beaming smiles, couldn’t even be bothered to read the biog…..’Hey hi guys , fabulous to have you in here today , I’m a great fan..when did you guys first meet ’ …….. Questions like that don’t always bring out the best in the artist……

 

That’ll have to do for now though…..but I’ll gather my thoughts a bit and follow up with a few more radio moments in future blogs. Anyone out there can help? I’d be more than grateful. I actually started a Facebook group for that sole purpose………I hate it so much when you have to rack your brain and think what the hell went on.. I still feel the same age now though as when I did the show……even though my memory doesn’t necessarily agree.

Filed under: Business Lessons, Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, Risk , Add new tag, Hue and Cry, Last Radio Programme, Mike Mills, Pat and Greg Kane, Peter Buck, Piccadilly Radio, REM, tony michaelides, Tony the Greek