Slumbering but awakened.

Utter disgrace, that’s what I am. I pontificate about a love for writing and what do, I don’t write. Right? Well I am about to right my wrong, big time. The truth is there is an excuse,’cept I don’t like excuses so go ahead, berate me for all I’m worth.

Ok I will tell you if you must ask, better still I’ll let John Lennon tell you because you’re more likely to listen to him. ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ I don’t think I’m alone either. What happened to the world? It was a lot cooler to me growing up, so many people around me doing well and us all inspiring one another. Fire in the blood and  a passion in the soul, although it does help when you get rewarded for your talents. Today  so many people are working for next to nothing, budgets are decreasing daily and they are torn between passing on a project because it doesn’t pay against the risk someone might not come back to them when they have the money to spend. It positively sucks because all the time your overhead stays the same, you have to eat and you have to pay the electric bill.

For me I needed to take stock, to stop, look around and re evaluate everything. I went back to the evaluation committee (me) and made a conscious decision, it wasn’t working so time for a change. I had no one to blame, only myself so cure was more the likely. Getting older I might be but lack of energy and enthusiasm, forget it! I’m as fired up as I ever was. I’m a great believer in everything for a reason, people come in to your life at a time and it’s always more than pure chance. In fact it’s pure bliss and delightful to work with like minded people who all share the same belief. There’s a passion and a commitment and even more than that a determination to make it work. The older you get the more you have to look back on and the easier it is, or should be to work out what it is that you have. What you’re good at and what you have learned along the way. I learned a lot, damn it I wrote a book about what I learned. Maybe I should have read it before I told others! It’s amazing , I’m writing about the mistakes U2 made, the opportunities that came Simon Cowell’s way, David Bowie and Innovation and I’ve become every character in the book. Who needs case studies, lessons learned from Rock and Roll indeed.

And so cometh the time, cometh the man. I bring you the real me, older , wiser and a damn sight more ready to rip. Enjoy the ride, I most certainly will.

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Business Lessons, mistakes, View from the room, Journey Through The Past, tony michaelides

Moments to mentor

I have been absent for a while, just one of those things. Life gets in the way and we run around getting on with it but as normality returns my fellow brethren so will I and once more take keypad to screen which I suppose is the tech way of saying pen to paper but much more stupidly. Apologies for the long sentence, I didn’t see the need to fully stop.

This week started most pleasantly with a talk for some very nice people at Stetson University in DeLand, I was made to feel very welcome. A very good attentive crowd and a pleasing turn out from faculty completed the occasion. It’s so nice at this time of life to be able to get out and share some of what I learned in all my years working in the music industry and help those looking for their step in to the great unknown. That’s what it is really but then again that is also what makes it all the more exciting. The anticipation, the whole not knowing of what could or could not happen. I used to wake up every day and if I still had a job in the music industry I considered it a bonus. Nothing lasts foreever I thought but this was getting close. Like footballers you can trip and sprain something, in the music indsustry there is so much going on you can sprain your head at any moment! Somehow you pick yourself up, discard your brain and move on with a new determination.

I can’t imagine now having a job that doesn’t challenge you. I love what I’m doing, secretly you hope people will respond positively but you never know. It’s what keeps you focused and alert, you don’t want to slip up. And if you do then you don’t make the same mistakes again.

I love the Q and A sections in a talk and finding out what people want to know. You’ve stood there for an hour and all of a sudden you don’t have the say, the audience do. A good talk will always lead to interaction with an audience. They feel they’ve got to know you and have the confidence to ask anything. A quiet and non responsive Q and A and you have to wonder if you communicated as well as you could have. Speaking is great but engaging your audience is everything. Some speakers I have seen stand there and you can tell it’s clearly about them. Well wrong, far from it, it’s for the others to get something out of it.  It isn’t  a platform for you to wallow in self adoration and project an air of supremacy like the stage is yours. Humility and an understanding of what you audience wants is the sign of a good speaker. Oh and someone who has a message to communicate and not just someone who has learned how to speak publicly.

 

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, View from the room, communication, public speaking

TMP

Running my own company out of the city where I lived was a dream come true but being allowed to indulge in my hobby was way above dreaming!  I’d survived working in the music industry for seven or eight years when the opportunity arose to start my own regional promotion company. ‘What’s that?’ I hear you say. In a nutshell we got paid to get artists on television and their records played on local radio, local being the whole of the British Isles. I’d been initiated in to the world of promotion at Island Records and I can’t think of a better place with better mentors. They had a unique ability to bring together good, talented and hard working people who had a passion for music. Everyone who worked there already owned half of their catalogue and like myself, they were honored to be a part of it. I have mentioned before that it always felt weird thinking I would no longer have to pay for their records, I’d get them free and be paid to give them to other people. I would have gladly done the job for free.

There’s a time and a place and it somehow felt right. I had been offered the head of promotion job at Island but didn’t want to relocate down to London, why should I? Manchester was my home, so let the work come to me. Regional promotions up until was something the record companies handled in house and never to the extent that it was much of  a priority. They knew regional radio existed but it was mostly a task they’d give an assistant to do. If they were mailing records out then they thought if you get some time find out if these people are playing anything. Their entire focus was on the ‘big one’ Radio One, the UK’s national radio station. If they had a record on the playlist there then it had a good chance of being a hit, something I would never dispute. My argument was that more people listened to the combined commercial radio stations than listened to Radio One so they couldn’t be avoided. And furthermore they were on the rise, more and more of them were springing up all the time since the government had changed the monopoly the BBC had. If you want to be at the forefront then don’t get left behind and through the eighties and in to the nineties they continued to grow in numbers and in importance.

I had enormous fun when I began, just me and a mobile phone driving up and down the motorways of England visiting radio and television stations and a girl in the office answering the phone and saying, ‘he’s not here you can get him on his mobile.’ Seemed to make more sense than a random answaphone message and people either hanging up or getting frustrated. Just to be in the music business was enough but to be given an opportunity to run my own company, to stand and fall by my own decisions was more both exciting and motivating.

I say stand and fall by your own decisions because that is exactly what it entailed. In the past I was given records to promote but had no real choice and it wasn’t whether or not I liked them. They were paying my wages so that was my job but now this was something entirely different. Fortunately I had some people I respected in senior positions at records companies plus some others with a proven track record who had started to dabble in the world of record labels so I landed some quite significant projects. And once in I never looked back, it was an amazing journey with some equally amazing people.

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Journey Through The Past, PR, record companies, independant promotion, independent local radio, regional promotion, TMP

Days I remember all my life

I tuned in to my new found radio home ( http://www.manchesterradioonline)  because radio honcho man Paul Ripley had uttered the words ‘Guess who’s on my show? ‘ And the guess who was none other than the Martian Spider himself Woody Woodmansey. All of a sudden I was working while I was listening to the radio and I thought I’d discovered multi tasking. I was wrong, I stopped and I listened. Radio heaven, a spider talking about the web he lived in.

It’s hard to believe that Ziggy celebrates his 40th year anniversary this June and they are still not teaching it at schools, even worse why isn’t it a case study at music schools, business schools, everywhere! Paul started proceedings with ‘Five Years’ from the Hunky Dory album, well that was it. I downed tools and gloriously fell back in time, I was at The Hardrock  (no please, no burger references, it wasn’t that one) and I was rammed close up front and personal and gazing forward at what still remains one of the greatest concerts of my life. Not of course that I’ve been to many….It was September 1972, Saturday 2nd to be exact and I went back the next night to see them again. And again in December, he played that same venue four times that year. And yes I did.

That song took me back to my college years and when I first heard it. I had just bought Ziggy Stardust and was thrilled to bits. I had just also starting dating a ‘college cutie’ I think we call them now, back then she was just a chick. I think we’d been for  a drink, maybe  a movie and then it was back to listen to records until God knows what hour until I’d hitch home. You did these things back then, it was the norm for teenagers like us. Can you imaging even thinking of doing that now, never mind hitching home but just the mere thought of listening to a record !

Anyway she pulled out Hunky Dory and stuck on Five Years, and then initiated me with the rest of the album. That was it, I never left and were married six years later. Why wouldn’t you marry a girl with a record collection like that, Marie I thank you! Oh and for our two beautiful children but let’s face it Bowie came first.

Back to the show. Woody was an unassuming character, happy with his lot today yet proud and very grateful for what he’d had. Well who wouldn’t be, there was only him and three others after all. It was fascinating to hear someone other than Bowie talking about that period and especially from where he was standing, behind the man and driving home a relentless beat. What a seat! He spoke of how he got the gig and also about the late Mick Ronson, never a forgotten hero to me and many others. I can see him now with his glam pants and mad hair, and that iconic rock pose with Bowie sliding under his legs and dragging the solo out of him. Bowie loved him and although Mick  was a wonderful guitar player Woody said he never saw himself like that. Bowie would ask him to play a solo and then tell the producer, ‘keep it’ although Mick thought he needed to go back and do it over and over again. When you’re that good you’re good first time round.

Woody also talked of those wondrous eccentricities that are David Bowie. How he would ‘mess about,’ pick up an accordion that was lying around and tell the producer Ken Scott, ‘record this.’ The band would sit around and watch all this going on thinking, why is he pissing about, let’s get on with it. Then it would be played around with in creative , innovative ways with his producer and himself and they’d look at each other and say, ‘how the hell did he get it sound like that?’ And it would end up on the album and the rest indeed is history.

Great stories makes great radio and this was great in itself. Good questions that came over like any fan would ask and a responsive totally normal guy telling it like it was. It could have gone on forever, I’m first in line to request a repeat. Get him back and roll the tape once more. It gives you hope and brings back your faith in radio once more. Bring it on.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I’m thinking of the days,
I won’t forget a single day, believe me.

Ray Davies 1968

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, manchester radio on line, Opportunity, Radio Ga Ga, Hunky Dory, Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey, ziggy stardust

My Manchester

Living and working, in fact just being there in Manchester in the 70’s and 80’s was very exciting. A whole hub of creative industries grew up alongside a lot of great music. All over the world people were sitting up and becoming aware of Manchester. It wasn’t the type of place (or people) you could ignore, us Mancs were noisy.  Manchester was alive and kicking, frantically.

There were venues springing up for bands to play and there were nightclubs and people were going to both. Whatever you wanted was there and it had an effect on the culture, the whole dance indie scene was vibrant. People wanted to hear good music and dance so they went to gigs and they also went to clubs. The stuff being played at The Hacienda was way ahead of it’s time and the people playing that music knew what they were doing. Music has always been about innovators setting the pace and creating a scene and here you have to give credit to everyone, the fans, the bands, the music and the DJ’s.

Factory Records was alive and kicking, The International Club was attracting many of the best live acts and when the capacity wasn’t enough for some of them they bought a larger venue closer to the city center, International 2. Whoever was touring never missed playing a show in Manchester, they couldn’t afford to. Alongside the International there were the universities, The Apollo, G-Mex arena and the even bigger arena which I think then was still calling itself Nynex.

The city was abundant with creative industries, record industry people, photographers, journalists, booking agents, publicists, you name it they were all working out of Manchester never seeing the need to move to London. Back in those days you’d go to gigs and there were so many people there you knew you already had a crowd! Manchester had one of the largest commercial radio stations in Piccadilly Radio and the ever adventurous Granada TV who’d built a reputation for being the first with the TV debuts of the greats. From The Beatles to The Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, U2 and Blondie Granada were always way ahead of the rest when it came to music. The only one who came close was Tyne Tees in Newcastle when The Tube sprung up.

All throughout my 30 year career in the music industry I never moved out of Manchester, why would I? My company was ideally situated to look after the UK for regional promotion as we were smack dab in the middle. Why move to London and spend half your life on the road traveling to radio stations? Although it was hard explaining to some Londoners it made perfect sense to me. I was nearer 80% of the stations living where I did. The trouble with the music industry is they think nothing goes on or can go on outside of London, ‘You live in Manchester?’ they’d complain as though it was anywhere they’d ever been anyway! Ah the times I’d answer the phone and they’d chirp, ‘aye up Tone.’

They’ll be more soon on my life and times spent in Manchester. I did eventually move but out of the country and not to another city, how could I ?

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Journey Through The Past, View from the room, Factory Records, International Club, Manchester, The Hacienda

Let’s go round again

Let me tell you what it’s like when you get older.  You have those glorious gazing out the window times when you smile as some truly wonderful moments start to flash by. And for no apparent reason, I’m having one right now. Calm and serene and away from the madness we all have going on from time to time, everything stops for that moment. I’m happy that I’m having a bunch of those moments right now and savoring every minute of them. You start to reflect on the fun you had growing up, where, when and with who.

Sometimes we all need to lighten up a little and not become too self absorbed. We need to drag ourselves out of our own little life cocoon. What do we have if we don’t have laughter and anyway, why wouldn’t you want to smile? If you smile there’s a good chance you’ll get smiled back at and if you frown people look the other way.  If you’re not Basil Fawlty you won’t get away with it. And if you want to walk around with a glum face then get out of mine.

And when you start reflecting you look  back on pivotal moments in your life. And it always involves people and places. How clear those moments become and how vividly you can see those people etched in memory. Yet for that one moment they are there. You can almost touch them. You stop and you turn and you think, My God how long ago was that! I don’t ever want to lose the romance of my youth and the beauty of my friends, everyone of them with their own curious little idiosyncrasies. Each worthy of friendship and most at some time, motivating. And the ones you fall out with, you don’t really fall out with you just start to move in different directions. It’s the circle of life and for all it throws at us I’m glad it’s there. It helps us to define where we want to go and what we want to do but more importantly who we are. Those times when our eyes are shut and we’re the only ones that don’t see it. It shades opportunities and it blurs reality.

Now I’m sure there must have been lousy days working in the music business but I don’t remember them. It’s my Led Zeppelin moment. There are some things that happen that you don’t want to remember so you blur them out. Why, because they don’t matter anymore, you’ve moved on and there really is no point dwelling on them. You start to realize that it could never have been as bad as it appeared anyway. Hell, I’m here aren’t I ? Be grateful for what you have and not for what you don’t have. Life was an adventure, a hell of one. The experience invaluable. It makes me more aware of those poor people that spend their life in jobs they hate. They have reason for remorse, where some can change others can’t.

This blog is the perfect home, for the people and the places. There are a whole host of things I have meant to blog about that I haven’t. So now is the time to rectify that and no matter where Tiger takes his pants there has to be room for stuff that matters. I am feeling the love and love makes you want to put back. Stand back!

And with the job I even loved the crap ,you felt for the people who were giving it and getting it. If it meant having them calling you to vent then so be it. If that’s their way of releasing tension then that’s fine. I’d rather have them shout at me for no reason than have them keel over and have a coronary.

When this all began I said I had a bunch more things to say and after 120, 000 words I haven’t. Life got in the way. I had to take care of stuff that cropped up and when I wrote it was more about the current and less about the past. Apart from the lessons learned there weren’t as many of the stories I’d promised. The people and the places are too valuable to sit on the back burner.

Until now. Sit back while I light the touch paper.

Filed under: About The Engine Room, About Tony Michaelides, View from the room

Days at the old schoolyard

Many visibly tremble when they hear  the words, ‘your childhood will come back to haunt you.’ Not me, I embrace my childhood. As I said in my book, I was a happy child, I still am. I really don’t have any bad memories of growing up, my parents did their best for me and for that I was eternally grateful. I had a roof above my head and warm clothes, I had to, we didn’t have central heating and in winter I remember waking up with frost on the windows. I wrote my first symphony by the age of five and was on the catwalk with Briggitte Bardot when I was nine. I stood for parliament two years later and turned down my own TV show because it interfered with weekend soccer. ( OK the last bit was total bollocks but I was still a beautiful, luscious and inventive child who rebelled being an adult)

To be honest they were more romantic memories than anything likely to haunt me. In fact if I’d been able to communicate without dribbling I bet I would have blurted out that  I was a happy baby. Where would we be without our memories, and where would we be without Facebook? I’m sure we all thought there were people from our childhood who we’d lost contact with, forever. Our lives moved us in different directions and time drifted us apart. So much so that you don’t even remember until something such as writing about your childhood stirs the memory. It happened to me in the book and it triggered up a whole host of fond memories.

Our lives move at a quicker pace as adults because we have to take care of business. When we get older we have to take care of others but when we are young we are only taking care of ourselves. There’s a time and a place you’re together and then there’s a time and a place when you’re not. We move on, we went to school together and then we work apart. C’est la vie.

Over the year or so I’ve been on Facebook I’ve thrilled at some of the people who have mysteriously reappeared. I suppose I’m easier to find with my name than some of the girls I knew who have married and changed names. I kept my maiden name if only for those maidens! Suddenly up pops a notification and up pops a smile, mine. How wonderful a name can be to remind you of fond memories that seemed distant and forgotten. Pivotal moments in yourlife.

Well I’ve had the weird stories but none weirder than last week. Up popped an e-mail header ‘Penny Belshaw,’ oh My God! My childhood sweetheart, the girl I used to walk home 41 years ago! In fact she lived a little further away than me so technically maybe she was walking me home. I’m sure that must have pissed her off and that’s why she disappeared for all this time. Low and behold last week I got  a note saying’ Someone told me you mention me in your book?’ Er, small world indeed. How on earth did she know that? It transpires that an old school friend Nigel who again found me through Facebok and had bought my book found her on Friends Re united. And he told her. All the weirdest and most wonderful of coincidences.

We spoke on the phone and it was like being back at a time and a place. 1960 something, school, and walking home with her. I won’t recount the episode in the book ( go buy it you cheapskate!) apart from saying we didn’t have four children and name them after each member of Led Zeppelin. As if! It was so funny though because all the time we walked home I’d get home and rehearse trying to ask her out, building up the courage. Each new stroll home it would be ‘this is it’ and it went on for a couple of years. Lame? Nah, I think In was just being cute!

Just being in my early teens was enough but here was this sassy chick (see I remember my rock terminology!) putting out, as she says in her own words in the best way she could for a fourteen year old. It must have been killing me  because secretly I would have been terrified of rejection. What if she had said no? Would I have ever asked another girl out again. You have to remember back then we had to ASK girls out, it wasn’t a text that said, ‘You’re hot, what are you doing wednesday xoxo.) No I had to stand there and confront her and tremble.

It got even more funny because after a few e -mails she admitted that the attraction was mutual ( YEEEEEEEES!!!) Sorry I had to know at least that much after all these years. And then she said, ‘But you were so damn cool! I’d get in and wonder what the hell I had to do to get you to ask me out.’

Cool at fourteen, how cool is that! See if you’re destined fort coolness you gotta start early and if the chick has to suffer then so be it. It’s still making me smile but you know, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. It’s funny to see what an outrageous flirt I became and maybe that was destiny too. I flirt with everyone, animal, vegetable, mineral. If it moves I flirt with it, it’s a target and I love it.

But it was such a golden period. I really think it helps shape you, makes you who you are. Those gone but never forgotten moments and just last week a part of my life stood still. And I sloped back to those glorious strolls home with my first true love just me and her, and my unashamed innocence. When I was so fuckin’ cool!!!!

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Journey Through The Past, View from the room, first love, Journey Through The Past, teenage years, tony michaelides

Lessons learned and stories to tell

Seeing the U2 show last week reminded me of how they became as huge as they are. They had a bunch of songs that helped but it was so much more than that. I’m using my blog to blatantly advertise how we’ll be looking at how artists become successful and what they do to get there. They’ll be the website( http://www.insightscollection.com) A new You Tube channel called speakmusic.tv , podcasts on I Tunes . Check out http://www.tincan.tv, http://www.manchesterradioonline,co.uk and keep glued to this. And I don’t have a clue what might happen tomorrow

There’s a lot going on and I’m really lucky to have a team of highly talented people around me to help me with the stuff I’m totally crap at. I just found out I’m shit at a bunch of things but it’s the more technical stuff really thats take me an eternity to get my head round. I love what it can do but I get frustrated at the time it takes to get it right. I’m amazed to watch people do ‘stuff.’ Wow, cool is getting cooler. Wouldn’t it be cooler than the cool of cool if someone invented ‘non nerd voice recognition pro tools.’ Software that you can say ‘Edit the stuff out where I sound a twat’ and it does. Mmmm dangerous though, letting a machine decide your level of incompetence. Anyway I think I know what i’m trying to say. Read on and you all might get a chance.

In fact my techo slow go is why I never became a producer. The band would have written another album before I’d recorded the first. Maybe I’m good at people and not machines? That’s OK. If you get on with a computer and you work well you can’t go grab a beer together after work can you? As it happens I like people, a few have let me down over the years but that happens. You dust yourself down and move on. Another slice of life, a stab at growing up. Shit, I don’t want to do that!

You’re lucky you’re at the end of a computer screen, I’m unbearable right now. I’m so excited about where we’re going with all this, so totally fired up and the people I’m working with all are here for the ride too. They can identify my crap better than I can identify it myself. They’re crap savvy. Position people where they work best and everyone benefits. It’s what motivates us all, we are seeing it all start to take shape.

Interpersonal skills are what got me this far, I think. And if they didn’t then I’m fucked because I’ll have no one to talk to. I even want to teach people about people now. How to work with those you admire and how to tolerate those you don’t. Music schools teach students to be adept at pro tools but that’s no good if you don’t know how to interact with a human being. Who’s going to want to work with anyone who’s a plank?

It’s a bit early so I’m all over the place. I’m currently writing to do lists  but it’s a bit early for that too. I can’t read some of them and I can’t find the others.

And now the sun’s coming up.

Later.

Filed under: About The Engine Room, About Tony Michaelides, Uncategorized, Interpersonal skills, U2

Even better than the real thing

I was just catching up on a few of the reviews and comments from the audience regarding last night’s U2 ‘360 Degree’ show. ( Very close to the temperature, too!)Pretty mixed really, and an amazing amount of people who were seeing them for the first time. For them it was quite an experience and for one person it was their first concert! Where the hell do you go after that. Love them or hate them, whichever way you look at it it has to be the biggest show on earth by a mile.

As it’s all anyone is talking about here in the Tampa Bay area I thought I’d make a start on a series of U2 blogs. I just got a note from my old pal Neil who’s about to step on a plane so no doubt we will end discussing this even more over the coming weeks. (Neilstorey.blogspot.com.) In fact Neil goes back even further than I do with U2…… and that’s nearly 30 years. He was responsible for persuading myself and my then lodger, Mark Radcliffe to drag ourselves out on a  filthy wet saturday night to see them supporting Wah Heat at what was then the Art College in Manchester( was it 1981?) It was soon to become the ‘Poly’ and  where they played several times when I was working with them and where I still hold the record guest list……..106 people when I took most of Granada TV along to see them.

Merely mention U2 to me and so many memories come flooding back. I dread to think of how many shows I did with them in the early 80’s and watched them blossom and flourish until they finally exploded. You can’t ever imagine the belief that band had in themselves from the very beginning. Even now they helped inspire me as much as anyone to write my book.

Last night was special. My friend Darrin who did pretty much everything other than write the damn book, Insights from the Engine Room really wanted to go, I was hot and had been all week so the thought of standing in a field for hours sounded like a lot of work. A 72,000 record breaking audience is pretty smelly in this humidity but I thought I should do the decent thing and see if I could get us some tickets. I sent a note to Paul McGuinness their manager and tickets, backstage passes and hospitality was provided the same as it has every year since they managed to make a living without me. I stood on the mixing desk and watched in amazement. I amazed myself, I should be used to it all by now. Somehow I doubt I ever will be.

I’m still tired as it was one hell of an exhausting but fulfilling night so I’ll get to bed and come back and write some more later. And don’t you dare wake me.

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Book Tony Michaelides, 360, 360 degree tour, Mark Radcliffe, Paul McGuinness, Tampa, U2

Houston, you’re the problem

In all my years in the music business I don’t think I’ve cared less about any person than Whitney Houston. I can’t stand her. Well that’s not true, when I first heard ‘I want to dance with somebody ‘ she looked vibrant, energetic and it was a good little pop song. Ever since then she and Clive Davis’ double act make me want to hurl. Clive did many good things in the 60’s and 70’s but put these two ego’s together and it’s scary, all that glorious, pretentious, I love you so much sicko babble. Yuk. They just can’t stand it when people don’t pay attention. Of course Clive has American Idol too now where they can place him up on his throne and say how wonderful he is but that’s not important, he knows that more than anyone. Clive Davis is the most important thing to ever happen in the music business and it probably says so on his business card.

Just look at the obscene amount of money being spent on yet another comeback. Is she running out of money? Clive should have told her she’d been making shit records for too long instead of proving yet again how artist’s careers are down to him. Wasn’t it last comeback time he recruited a bunch of people to appear on the album and sing with her. Help a Whitney time again. We’ll be having Whitneythons next.

She was the crooner and balladeer for eternity, but since when did eternity have a place on earth. There’s ballads and there are crap ballads……Dolly, I will never forgive you for letting her do that song. ‘Whitters’ made it her own and turned it in to an anthem, albeit at funerals but hey, it’s a powerful song and she sung it well. And she can sing, it’s just everything else that comes out of her mouth. Do we need  Oprah to give her the voice to tell us that Bobby Brown was a train wreck? He’d been a write off for ever, it’s his prerogative. Weird business when you can make a career out of one song. And it’s OK for her to spill out her drug addiction now to win back her fans. Are we supposed to feel sorry for here since she helped to settle Peru’s national debt?

Well there’s a suprise, she’s got a new record out. Funny how you don’t do these things when you DON”T have a record out and you’re on the front page of a newspaper looking like a char woman but less sexy. What’s the point, there’s no money to be made and you can’t let us know ‘I’m back.’ Cos you’re not, you’re slipping out the back.

Just go away, this is (was) a business about embracing new talent and unless you’re relevant (Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin or The Pink Floyd and there are plenty more, just not you , luv) you’re history, and not good history at that. It’s about the great records you gave us. Step up to the table and tell me one great record you’ve plastered your name and face all over? There aren’t any, you just have a mentor who or for some reason thinks you walk on water. My cup runneth over, you suck.

I could go on forever about you woman but it’s still more publicity and you don’t deserve it, you’re just one of those people that can’t stand the thought of being ignored. Well hopefully the world will realize that you’re a waste of theirs and everyone else’s money.

How can you justify what I just read in the Sun newspaper….

Her comeback could cost her a whopping £6.8million.

That’s the amount leading accountancy firm AAT has calculated it will take for the pop queen to launch a comeback in these credit crunched times. The legendary solo artist’s record label faces shelling out £675,000 for an album, £5.6million for a world tour, an image update at £16k and nearly £11k for a team of hairdressers, stylists and make-up artists.

And in the current economic situation that’s nothing short of obscene. Money that could be spent on new exciting talent that record companies no longer want to spend. Well how can they when they are to spend THAT on THIS. How many careers could you launch with that instead of habitually reigniting the dying embers from someone who should have long since faded. How many of those talents would ever be afforded two days on Oprah seeking forgiveness(record sales)

Whitney Houston never did any promo when she didn’t have to, and now she does she gets the biggest show on earth. If God had a chat show she’d be the first guest. Now the reality is that no one would give a toss whether or not she made a record, it just means that whatever they need to spend to make her feel the Queen of all Divas they will. And they do even though she KNOWS she’s the Queen of the Divas. She invented it.

Bye bye Whitney, gone and forever forgotten you’d hope. But as long as Clive Davis is around how many more Whitney Houston comebacks will we be forced to endure. If you’ve gone away, there’s a reason. Please stay away.

Filed under: About The Engine Room, About Tony Michaelides, Clive Davis, sun newspaper, Whitney Houston