A notion on promotion…Hey Mr Tambourine man, play a song for me

What a great job I had, and as it was how I made my living I thought it was about time I talked a little about it. But talking a little is something I don’t do very well , so I decided that I should cover it in installments,  episodes…. maybe start it with a two hour ‘season premiere?’ But installed in my life it was for close on 30 years so it should be fun approaching it here, and as it will involve the people I’m rather hoping it should trigger some of them to help it along the way. The least I can expect is a cathartic moment, or two.

 

When I originally got asked by my friend Terrie if I fancied the job at Island as their regional radio guy, I wasn’t quite sure if I did. It seems a bit ludicrous now (see duck to water) I was a natural, you needed to talk and I’d majored in that and it was only fitting now that others should suffer. I have skimmed over my intro in the NFL of plugging but only briefly so here’s how it cam about.

 

Terri had a lodger called Bill. Bill was a hunk of burning love, very much the ladies man. I was amazed he even had the time for a job. I not only ended up with his job but I also dated his ex, but not at the same time I might add.  Bill liked to party, but party was bad to him. He was taking one of his lady friends back to the nurse’s home where she lived one night, and was followed by a police car. Not good, the policeman was not there for the party. Bill drove in to the car park, stopped or maybe the car decided to stop for him, and turned off his lights. Total silence except for the sound of footsteps as the policeman walked over to the car and knocked gently on the window. Is there anyone there? Bill was there, but only just.

 

Not the greeting Mr Law Officer had expected so he gently opened the car door and Bill, bless him promptly fell out and in to a flower bed. Rather than wait for the pending court case, Island Records thought it was a good time to look for a replacement. Enter Terri, and if I never did, a big thank you to her for what helped shape my career. And that’s how I got summoned down to London for the ‘interview’ and my first soiree in to the mad cap world of promotion.

 

I knew then that Island was a brilliant company to work for when Terri told me that even with Bill about to lose his license, they had found a job for him in London. Not many companies would do that but it just endorsed my feelings that the label I was so fond of as a kid and ultimately destined to work for was indeed a family. I liked family and I was about to become their new sibling.

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Journey Through The Past, Add new tag, Island Records, radio promotion, record pluggers, record promotion, tony michaelides

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

Come out come out wherever you are….

Sometimes though, managing creativity can be a whoooole new ball game, more a farce than a creative force! Artists can be wonderful human beings…..they can be pleasant, creative, interesting and fun to be with. There are the times however, when you are their mother…….their brother, their sister and their dad. Oh the times I’ve wanted to send an artist to their room with no tea…. ground them, better still flog them.

 

Adjectives you might use to describe artists can have double meaning……..driven can mean driving you mad, creative…..creating mayhem, imaginative, on another planet. Prolific….total pain in the ass. Confident… swagger, arrogance and I want to thump you, you twat. Far out…..further the better!

 

Adventurous………meandering, a wanderer……. Read on

 

There was the time I found the singer of a band, who shall remain nameless in a broom cupboard at the back of the make up room with…………you guessed it, the make up artist who he’d been flirting with all day. We were at a TV station, again which shall remain nameless and to protect the innocent who may now be a Sunday school teacher for all I know. I never came to Blogsville to dish the dirt and I don’t intend to now. I’m content  in the ability of the stories to paint a picture without attaching names for the sake of scandal….I think we all see plenty of that everywhere. On the contrary if they inspired, motivated, were peers, icons or whatever then that’s fine, you’ll find out who they were. If they shagged, got busted or overdosed then it’s nobody’s business.

 

Anyway, I digress…… I had been repeatedly been telling him you’ll be needed at this time so don’t go far and I suppose for him the broom cupboard at the back of make up wasn’t far. This, after all the hard work I’d done to secure a prime time TV for this lot and the last thing I needed was the run around from Mr. Shag.  It becomes tiresome but being on the look out came with the territory. You had to have eyes and ears everywhere. A plugger on call is someone who is constantly watching, constantly looking……to see where their damn artist has gone. Plugger’s code was ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are’……. The artist’s doctrine, ‘I am therefore I will……’

 

There’s no point getting pissed off with them because next time he’ll think taking her back to his hotel is doing the sensible thing, and he’ll miss the show altogether. And later on when I did have a quiet word with him he said he was nervous. Nervous sex, there’s a new one! I had to deal with managing a kind of nervous sexual creativity….. And then diplomatically you can’t really tell anyone.  I couldn’t tell the band’s manager, he’d have killed the lot of us, I couldn’t tell the floor manager, the girl would have been sacked, and I couldn’t tell the record company because I’d have got my ass kicked…… And I could hardly tell the girl he was so nervous he needed to have sex with her in a broom cupboard, she’d be mortified…oh, and thank you for doing it somewhere I could find you both, most considerate. Suprising too that  on set his make up appeared a little rushed that day….

 

You see confident as they can appear on the exterior, artists can be incredibly nervous, terrified of failure. It explains, though never condones them getting off their faces. Then sex as a tension reliever….it happens. Well maybe for the artist, I couldn’t quite see any of us backroom boys/girls getting away with it. Maybe if you were nervous about getting a record on the playlist  you sneak the Head of Music in to the record library for a little ‘convincing’ ……depending on your gender and/or persuasion. Maybe a brief soiree with the TV researcher?. I don’t think so…..

 

 

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Business Lessons, Managing Creativity, Add new tag, lead singers, Management, Managing Creativity, musicians, record pluggers, 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

Songs in the key of life………an odd view from a room..

 Indeed!  Isn’t it weird how some of your all time favorite songs come back to haunt you. Maybe through a relationship, maybe in a dream…….maybe in a tropical depression! I’ve loved most of what Bob Dylan and Neil Young have done for a very long time. Of course they’ve had their not so great periods but I’m fine with that. I can find something else to sing in the bath and still come out clean. I love titles, as you’ve probably gathered because as I write these blogs titles hit me right between  the eyes and serve their purpose admirably……’You gotta serve somebody’ Damn you Bob, there I go again.

 

I digress…….now there’s a surprise……Hmmm, sounds like a good title for the book. I had originally thought ‘Will you shut the fuck up’ would be perfect but with so many sensitive types out there who didn’t know me, they just wouldn’t get it…..and that in return would mean no one else would.

 

Lost in words again, right I’m back now….hang in there. So as I was saying two all time favorites songs that I would sing away to whenever they hit the decks (round going round piece of audio equipment of old that could not be strapped to your wrist or upper arm for lousy sound reproduction enabling you to jog round the neighborhood and show off your new lycra shorts….this was music to the ears and nothing to do with cardio. I always found a good snare and high hat got the old ticker in sync.)

 

Wow this is early and I’m all over the place. I wish you were here and at least you could bring me coffee.  SO……………… the songs in question were ‘Like a Hurricane’ by Neil Young and ‘Hurricane’ by Bob Dylan. Of course the latter was about the incarcerated boxer Rueben ‘Hurricane’ Carter and a masterpiece of storytelling in song, and Neil’s was a love song with some of the most explosive guitar ever to grace my lugholes. My God, I’m a sucker for when he lets rip on his fretboard , the older and crinklier he gets the grungier and harder the guitar….athough this is over 20 years old it’s something he’s never lost.

 

Then August 2004 arrived a little noisily….. I’d recently emigrated and was doing what you do, finding my feet, looking for work and seeing if I could meet anyone not related to Mickey Mouse…… I’d moved to Orlando and everyone was on holiday. Never easy……I mean how can anyone teach you how to emigrate? After all it’s not like moving house, and something you get used to in time. I was already getting used to people looking at me rather bemused if I said something that I thought was mildly funny, or at least the type of banter you’d have going for years with friends back in England. That was fine, I chose to come here and am happy to adapt to a new way of life. ‘When in Rome’ that’s what I say. Sadly with climatic conditions being as they are in Florida there’s no room for negotiation.

 

Right that’s the beginning. I’m going away for some more coffee and maybe a banana, possibly a mango. It’s none of your business. I needed that, so thanks for being there. I wake up with mischief in my head ……….and a lot else!  I feel the need to write first thing when I get up, but I need to be gentle or you could end up like me. There’s the sunrise too and I get withdrawal symptoms if I miss too many. Born in England I had to have sunrise explained to me…………what bright red thing in the sky? It does what, and what happens to it later. Let me get my mac, (no stupid not Apple) tell me more!

 

So, I will be back, it’s nothing personal and it’s for your own good…. If I don’t log off for a while it could be detrimental to your health. I’m going to tell you about Charlie, and why after a Category 4 hurricane I chose to move to somewhere 5 feet above sea level and where there is a compulsory evacuation for a Category 1 storm.

 

I could even turn it on to a business lesson…….Risk and how to cope when your laptop is floating out of your hands. It doesn’t involve Bono or Bowie but it’s pretty rock and roll…..

 

 

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, View from the room, Add new tag, bob dylan, hurricanes, neil young, rueben 'hurricane' carter, tony michaelides

View from the room…..Paul Newman, a hard act to follow.

 

Out of the sex and the drugs and the rock and roll that surrounds Hollywood and it’s league of actors it’s refreshing to find that the real stars always shine through, and especially when their passing away is mourned by so many of us. Paul Newman was one such person, a great actor, dangerously handsome, dashing, with panache…… and a pair of blue eyes that would have got him cast in something, anything just to parade that look on the silver screen. Too much for one person to have really, except when you throw in some truly human values you see just how special he was, and will always be.

 

Watching news reports on CNN yesterday and then today reading through the various obituaries again prompts a view from a room. I had seen some of his films but not all and remember him fondly as Butch Cassidy as much as I do any of them. It evokes the type of reaction that rarely happens, where you feel you wish you knew him. As much as I love music and have respect for many artists there are some that I haven’t met that I crave no desire to. I’m happy with what they give me creatively but wouldn’t want to risk tarnishing that image by ever meeting them. They probably wouldn’t care to meet me either! They have something too……..but it’s not anything I would want……..Yet I got the impression yesterday that this guy was so content, so deserving of star status that he would probably be interested to meet me, and everyone else he was introduced too.

 

He was quite respectful and dignified……….where quite means dignified and respectful, not shy and unassuming. How often in today’s entertainment circus do you get to use that word, dignified but he and his wife of fifty years Joanne Woodward were just that, comfortable with that greatest of talents that acting, fame, money or power could never bring….dignity.

 

Everything about Paul Newman seems to separate him from the rest. He had more in common with the dashing Hollywood leading man of old than any of his contemporaries. It all seemed to come so naturally. You can go to acting school and they can teach you may things but they can’t teach you ‘decent’………decent is something that comes from within. Many have tried it when it suited them but few could sustain it.

 

Never needing of all the glitz and glamour that Hollywood brought he retired to Connecticut to live a real life with his loving wife. Paul Newman did normal better than anyone. He didn’t shun Hollywood, he just went there when duty called. Being a Hollywood actor was what he did so he did it…….he just didn’t do it all the time.

 

He was more interested in giving back. The philanthropist in him made him go about his charity work in a very quiet and dignified way also…you rarely knew what he was doing/giving …he just did it. He turned over the entire value of his ownership in ‘Newman’s Own’ the salad dressing company he helped to create to charity, an incredible $120 million. He sent camps to Africa every year summer to run programs for ill and needy children………more millions of dollars. Who knows what else he was doing.

 

As if his looks and his smile and his talent weren’t enough, every time I saw his face on television yesterday, his picture in the newspaper  he had that look of contentment. What is more attractive in a man than someone who looks content and comfortable with himself? How many ladies would be happy with someone who had half of what Paul Newman had? A truly great, decent and dignified human being and as the tributes rolled in yesterday from the people he had known a lifetime let those that never knew him wished we had.

 

One thing we can be certain of is that he’ll rest in peace…..after all he was so rested and at peace in his lifetime.

 

Filed under: Business Lessons, View from the room, Add new tag, Butch Cassidy, Hollywood great, Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman

Shopping made easy..the art of record retail

The mid seventies had a whole host of really cool record stores and on my weekly calls I would spend most of my time in them, too long in fact…..not only selling them records but looking for stuff I wanted for myself. Liverpool had Probe Records which was fairly legendary and was run by a great guy called Geoff Davis…one of the best places to visit, without a doubt. His original shop was just a front room of a terraced house, or at least it looked like it, situated around student digs so they could fall out of their lodgings and land in his shop.

 

Once in there you were faced with more vinyl than wall or floor space……. there were more records in there than seemed possible. I remember I used to get little cuts at the end of my fingernails, cuticles I think the word is……from trying to pull a record sleeve out of the browser. They were so tightly packed….how anybody got a sleeve out of there without ripping it I’ll never know. Geoff’s policy was ….if is was good it was worth stocking, irrespective of having nowhere to rack it. Once I pulled up outside his shop, hauled my truck on to the pavement (sidewalk) and had to climb over a stack of boxes to get in to the place! Geoff Davis was one of those rare characters that made the music industry the place to be back then. His passion for music meant he had to earn his living that way.

 

Probe Records was where I fist met Wylie….Pete Wylie, of course…..by this time Geoff had opened another shop around the famous Matthew Street area of the city….home of the original Cavern Club and Beatles folklore. I reckon he must have been around 16 and a good five years before he formed his bands Wah,Wah Heat, The Crucial Three etc……although knowing Wylie he probably was in a band then, I just wasn’t aware of it. I remember his love of The Clash and the Sex Pistols. I can still see him sitting on the counter at Probe, legs dangling listening to hours of punk. Wah Heat built up a good following back then…..the first time I ever saw U2 was when they supported Wah Heat. I think Bono learnt a lot back then from Wylie’s cocky swagger. He was a true salt of the earth character, a scouser through and through and in those days our football teams Liverpool and Manchester United were fierce rivals……so we tended to keep the conversations strictly to music.

 

I have another nice story of when U2  supported Wah Heat at the Polytechnic in Manchester and I went with Mark Radcliffe………….save it for another day though

 

Before going to Liverpool I used to visit the Cheshire capital of Chester ..a beautiful historic city surrounded by Roman walls……… and see if they wanted any of my records. First stop W.H. Smiths and breakfast in the canteen with some lovely girls who worked there. A good start, sell a few records and then further up on one of the ‘rows’ …an elevated row of shops stood Impact Records………impact by name and impact by experience. It was owned and operated by by couple of Cheech and Chong types, real hippies. They were real fun and such nice guys but with about as much business acumen as a couple of cavemen. Their shop stocked only cool records, if it wasn’t cool but nevertheless a huge seller they still wouldn’t be seen dead with it in the racks.

 

Whenever I went in there would be a huddle of people on the customer side of the counter making it really difficult for a someone to get near to actually pay for anything. The guys would take it in turns to nip in to the back of the shop….at 9-30am Lord knows what for….One can only imagine it wasn’t to replenish the stock because  no one ever seemed to buy anything.!

 

I have first hand knowledge of that and a classic lesson in record retail.  One Monday afternoon in June I turned up to see the usual huddle of store groupies, chatting, laughing ….doing anything other than buying records. One Glastonbury outcast was actually sat on the floor gnawing his way through an egg sandwich and had by his feet, a cool bag…clearly a necessity for a days retail therapy. In came ‘a punter’ a rarity in itself and someone you’d have thought they would not want to lose sight of…….maybe dealt with correctly they could even come back, bring a friend…who knows!!This guy somehow managed to work his way to the front of the counter , lean across and ask one of the guys what the album he had in his hand was like. He wanted an opinion before he parted with his hard earned cash. It was a picture when???? ?…his name escapes me, hardly matters though as I don’t think he never knew mine anyway as he always called me ‘Man’ …..replied ‘Oh just take it man, listen to it at home…if you like it drop us the money off next time you’re in town’ What a priceless exercise in retail management. Three months later I called on them as part of my usual Monday run……  the shutters were up, they’d gone out of business. Now there’s a surprise…..

 

Filed under: Business Lessons, Journey Through The Past, View from the room, Add new tag, Geoff Davis, Impact, Pete Wylie, Probe Records, tony michaelides, U2, Wah Heat, WH Smiths

Innovators and the lessons you can learn

The American Heritage Dictionary defines innovation as ‘the act of introducing something new.’ To me that IS David Bowie. His whole career has been one of innovation, even at the tender age of thirteen he had a pretty good idea of where he wanted to be by the time he was 30. He would watch as his career evolved and make the moves at the optimum time. Picking up a guitar, writing and singing was just the beginning. Even when he first picked up a guitar and excited as he was at the thought of being a pop star he still saw music as just the beginning, a steeping stone to everywhere else he wanted to go…. art , film, fashion. He was probably born knowing that there was so much that he wanted to do. Whatever he put his mind to he approached in the same determined way. If he didn’t think he could do it he wouldn’t bother trying. Always recognized throughout his career as the chameleon, Bowie has consistently been one step ahead of the rest.

 

You can learn many lessons from an artist like David Bowie that translate on a very human level too. Whilst he is obviously a motivator and a leader, his interpersonal skills are unique. I think I learnt as many managerial skills from working on his Earthling tour as I did in 20 years of running my own company. For someone so busy and active in all parts of his career he always manages to find time to listen to what people have to say. His time management skills are exemplary. If you wanted to talk to him about something important it would be ‘Let’s do it after sound check or let’s meet tomorrow for breakfast.’ An acutely alert mind with great attention to detail together with an ability to make a decision there and then as to whether or not he would do an interview. He would just ask the sensible question…..’What is it for?’  ‘Who will be doing it, tell me about them?’ and then ask your opinion ’What do you think?’

 

What I found amazing was that he even decided that he himself was best equipped to make these decisions. He dispensed with the services of a manager as he didn’t even feel he needed a soundboard, a second opinion on such crucial, potential career damaging decisions. To have that type of confidence and belief in yourself is truly remarkable……and then quietly go about making each of those career moves a success is even more commendable. You only need to look at where he is in that quest to realize there isn’t too much he has done wrong. Again I wonder why I continue to talk about him the way I do and realize quite what an impression he left on me. I find the people who impress you the most are the ones who try the least. They just have an ability to make you interested in how they go about things, and to make you want to learn.

 

To say I was impressed would clearly be an understatement. He also hand picks the people he wants around him and has a knack of bringing out the best in those people.  As the innovator he has that inspirational effect on you and by employing like minded people he wants to hear what those people have to say. There is a real feel good factor working with someone like Bowie and to work with him makes you want to be as good as him at what you do. People like this have always been my inspirational mentors, the people you aspire to and want to emulate professionally. For me it has always been a bit like football/soccer (wherever you are reading this.) I always supported Manchester United, my home town team from the UK. When players signed for them they raised their game, they played at that level. If you were destined to play in lower divisions you played at the level you needed to, and for some that is ‘just enough’ ……..a level you can get away with. You never test yourself. When I was a record promoter the projects I achieved the greatest success with were the ones where the team of people around me were all ‘Manchester Uniteds’ I didn’t ever want to work in the lower divisions and run the risk of underachieving, never testing myself, coasting. I needed to feel challenged and when I looked around at who I was working with I wanted to feel that we all wanted it. 

Filed under: Business Lessons, Innovation, Managing Creativity, Add new tag, David Bowie, earthling, Innovation, leadership, Managing Creativity

Rock and roll.our badges of courage

Being on the radio for twelve and a half years did my record collection no amount of good. I think by the time I was done, and together with still actually buying records I had accumulated around 6,000. Then slowly for one reason or another they went. It was cheaper to ship my furniture abroad than my record collection. I decided neither was coming and set about the task of emigrating. Sometimes I think of reaching for an album and thinking, damn!….. never mind, but then sadly I also get reminded of how it was all just a period in time. Then in the latter years of downsizing to a smaller home when the inevitable divorce came, I started to remember how many of the damn things lay there shrink wrapped on a shelf and gathering dust.

 

I have to be honest and at times admit to having become a part anorak. There was a time in the seventies and eighties that if Neil Young’s aunt’s gardener had released an album I would have owned it, shrink wrapped, never opened and proudly displayed wherever it was I stored crap. I’m sure I must have bought new records by these bozos and then taken them to HMV and had them shrink wrapped purposefully for display, elitism or maybe just odd behavior. I mean what sort of friends wouldn’t tell you that you were behaving oddly………….equally odd friends I suppose. That having been said…..it happened, I know not why but it happened.

 

I think I painstakingly may have labeled it completeism……….maybe later on nerdy. It seemed so crucial that I was able to turn up at a friend’s house at weekend and proudly announce. ‘Look what I got’ and we would sit crossed legged round the fire…….of course there were friend’s houses I frequented who didn’t have fires…….I wasn’t that weird. My friends were friends whether or not they had fires….I was just that type of guy.

 

I would then study the sleeve and my friends would look on admiringly and then with baited breath they would watch as I’d gently slide the vinyl out of the sleeve, quite why I didn’t have a clue. Was there a difference in the grooves, maybe it was scratched………..maybe I was just weird. We’d just stare at this shiny black surface. Then it would go back in to the sleeve and the whole carry on would start all over again with something someone else had bought.

 

Every weekend we’d gather at someone’s house and listen to music. The only time we went anywhere else was if there was gig and then…..same people, different room. It’s easy to giggle about it now but at the time it was brilliant. Music was our life, it’s all we ever wanted to do and luckily enough it’s pretty much all we ever did, apart from go to school just to pass the time. And then we’d even take our records in to school………no I haven’t got a clue either. It’s hardly as though you’d go and stick

Pink Floyd’s ‘Piper at the gates of dawn’ on in the middle of a geography lesson.

 

I remember being at school and my chosen music was progressive rock!! We had to wear it like a badge. You would walk to school with your Led Zeppelin album under your arm, face out so that everyone could see who you were a fan of. We were called weirdo’s ……..see I’ve always been odd!! We would completely dismiss any other type of music as crap and especially the soul boys. It’s so funny now because I remember totally ignoring and having nothing whatsoever to do with this compilation album ‘This is soul’. I would later discover it to be some of the finest artists of all time…Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding….the list goes on. Nah, we were in to prog rock…didn’t want any of that bollocks!

 

Isn’t it amazing you cannot reason one bit about so much of what you did as a kid…..and yet at the time it all seemed so normal. I mean taking records in to school and at weekends studying new, black plastic. Now studying girls, beer maybe at least you could say you tried her/it, liked it and would do it again. But …’I took a record in to school, it was brilliant, I think I’ll do it again’. The girls would leave the schools gates and almost to the second immediately hitch their skirts up and let their hair down and us boys would…fetch out our albums, our foooookin’ badges…… and if they were lucky let them walk near them, maybe even on the same side as we were carrying them, as long as they didn’t obscure the view so that others could still see who was in our gang, who were our ‘boys’. It was tough growing up a rebel.

 

 

 

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Journey Through The Past, Add new tag, HMV, led zeppelin, progressive rock, tony michaelides, Tony the Greek

Radio Ga Ga ……Red light spells danger

Cast your mind, or in fact my mind, back years ago. I can see myself sat there in my radio big man chair with these huge speakers hanging from the ceiling. Proper equipment and proper people milling around, newsreaders, glass panels and lots of big doors leading to different places with different equipment….and not a clue what any of it did. And then the big red light would come on and light up the room. I’d have my headphones on and it was…….SHOW TIME! …… All I knew was the red light said we were on air. It was always a relief to see that….and when you didn’t it meant dead air. Not good, not good at all. When that happened you would always see the other red light…the one on the telephone switchboard…..the ex directory line. Uh oh…..in radio jargon it signified a fuck up. The fuhrer was on the phone breathing fire….well he was always quite gentle really ’What happened then’ he’d say. I would always say the same ‘Nothing’ It seemed like the right answer and in fact totally right…nothing did happen, no music, no voice, no nothing! …….and not much of a follow up conversation either. Well I mean I didn’t want to be distracted now did I?

 

 The lights were dim, always doubly dim………so dim in fact I could rarely read what it said on the record sleeve and too dark to find the angle poise. I’d turn the music up and settle down to the best night in you could ever have. I only needed a bath, but that may have gotten a little tricky. I’d always pick out a ‘stonker’ for my first record. Out with the news jingle, a station ident as they call them and then crash, wallop one of Stu Allen’s highly polished and produced ‘Tony the Greek’ jingles. It made me sound like Wolfman Jack or some other mighty radio toff. I HAD to come out of that with maybe three killer cuts( radio jargon that signifies boss tunes) with the hope that after that it didn’t matter what shite I might spout off about. Having someone else voice over the show’s opening jingle always meant I got my name right too. Good start.

 

 

It was all chancing it.I just loved the risk, the thrill of the ride and how it could all fall apart at the seams.The red light meant live, totally live….it meant it was happening there and then. No props , no safety net. I mean what could go wrong.I wasn’t thinking that if the show wasn’t slick and polished that my mates wouldn’t come round and see me at the weekend. Business as usual. You go in , you do the show.Sometimes it was great , other times it wasn’t. Half of the fun was the never knowing , the sheer unexpentancy of it all. Why would I want to sit there for three hours if I knew everything that would happen , to the minute.Boring.

 

 

I played a lot of bands and artists that became successful……but by the same token the law of averages says I played loads of bands you’ve never heard of!  I would always try and support local stuff as much as I could but I could never, in my heart play something that was truly dreadful….and we never had payola then so I was never tempted!………..I mean who wants to be sent on holiday with a drop dead gorgeous model on an all expenses paid trip just for giving a crappy record one play, when I could get in to the International to see some lousy band I didn’t want to see for free just because the manager would call me every day and hassle the hell out of me. Half the time it was just easier to go……..and the other half said the model was nowhere to be seen.

 

Promoting records to specialist programs on the one hand and promoting them by playing them on the other was quite strange. Especially when I would phone some London based record companies up when I first started my show. You’d have some smart arsed plugger at the other end giving you the Spanish inquisition! I would tell them I was on the radio in Manchester and if they wanted to add me to their mailing lists.…… ‘Who are you?’. What radio station are you on? Where’s that…..  I never had any patience with them, after all it’s their job to find out where these shows are and actively promote to them…..and especially in local radio where there are so few programs that had free choice. I’d end up saying ‘Forget it’ I wasn’t going to be begging for free records, I was helping them do their jobs, damn it!’

 

Then these same dickheads would phone up and ask if I’d interview their artists as they were playing in Manchester……..’What group, what label are you from?’ I would delight in saying before leaving them to tidy up their own mess. I bet these people love it now that that can e-mail and text people and don’t have to expose their lame personalities to presenters. I must be honest I was critical of bad pluggers,  I always regarded it as a vitally important job. Can you imagine being a manager and knowing that this was the way they were representing your acts. The art of plugging is not far away in a plug blog to come !

 

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Journey Through The Past, Radio Ga Ga, Risk, Add new tag, Last Radio Programme, Piccadilly Radio, Stu Allen, tony michaelides, Tony the Greek