Notes from underneath the breadline

Today feels like Saturday.

I guess that, reading the above on the day between Friday and Sunday, it would appear to be obvious, immutable even, that today was a Saturday but having been a freelance musician/illustrator (or whatever it is I do nowadays) for the past eighteen years every day is Saturday, every night is Friday night. That’s not necessarily a good thing. The weeks and months slip beneath one’s feet, blurring and drifting without the weekend anchor to root you to any kind of calender. The body clock is fucked, birthdays are forgotten and whole seasons are missed. Do we have seasons anymore? Yesterday was warm and sunny, I was waiting for Mary after swimming last night and people were out in short sleeves and the tiny skirts and yet there are Christmas Trees in the windows of many of the bars around Cardiff.

Christmas Trees? Wasn’t it August three weeks ago?

The reason today feels different is because we’ve had so much work this week. As well as the whole Bandstocks thing, I’ve had my illustration for the Times, a commissioned illustration to finish and a design/layout job for Los Campesinos that we accepted even though we’ve never done any layout work before and it meant having to put ourselves through intensive crash course lessons in various software we’ve never used. we did it though, finished last night which is why I feel light as a feather this morning. That’s not to say I don’t work hard normally, it’s just that my brain was having to work in a different way. We need as much work as we can at the minute, we’re about to go from being a freewheelin’ couple to being a family on low income. It’s exciting though, I remember trudging to work in Birkenhead,twenty years ago, thinking that my entire life was mapped out in front of me in a dismal grey, formless sludge. I was determined to find the escape hatch and I did, not having to go into that office every day, to work for people and concepts that were alien to me, is the single greatest victory of my life and even if I have to go back, if things don’t work out, then at least I have tasted the air on a weekday morning in February, with nowhere to go, no-one to see, no bells to ring and no buttons to push. Somedays I would alight at Hamilton Square Station and walk in the opposite direction, take the ferry over to Liverpool and wander the streets, looking in windows and dreaming in Squares. Is that what I want from my son? I have no idea what I want for him. To be safe, warm and happy, that’ll do for now.

I worked in the red building (top). A place so dull that this was the only image of it I could find on the web.

So this week I’ve been staring at my computer for twelve hours a day, I’ve got a permanent headache and I’m crazier than a shithouse rat but I know things that I didn’t know at the beginning of the week and that’s what it’s all about. I forgot to mention in my last post that I’d seen my friend Adam last week. Adam used to be in a band called Swervedriver who were one of my favourites at the time (’Ravedown’ still sounds amazing) and we are good mates. He’s lived in the States for the last few years and we haven’t seen much of each other but he was in Cardiff to mix his album with Charlie Francis and Mary and I drove over to Roath to hang out for a while and listen to some of the (ace) tracks he was working on. He invited us to the Swervie reform gig at the Scala on Tuesday but, despite us having been in London that day, we didn’t make it. We went back to Cait’s to pick up the last of our stuff and I had a meeting with my manager. We left Cardiff at about six thirty am, got to Cait’s around ten and then I spent three hours packing and loading the van. After tubing it to Farringdon and then Hackney Wick (to view a not very nice flat) we got back to Caits around seven thirty, completely fucked. Cait made us some dinner -she is such a great lady- and then I drove back to Cardiff getting in around eleven. I slept well that night.

Mary had some breastfeeding workshops this week which was good practice for driving to the hospital. Her belly is huge now and she’s uncomfortable but she’s working hard and I’m immensely proud of her. It’s her birthday on Monday and I have no money to take her out of buy her anything nice, that’s not a great feeling. I’ll have to put a ribbon around the cat.

Gareth from Los Campesinos came over on Thursday to go through the DVD booklet that we’re working on. He’s a lovely lad, he was telling us that he’d been watching old Top of The Pops clips on youtube which brought visions of The Regents, Tourists and Pan’s People to my mind but he was talking about Blur and Oasis! Eh? I’m more than twice his age, fuck. He was lamenting the fact that there has been no real credible scene since Britpop which I had always considered a laughable concept. Bad music with no positive or maverick agenda, an establishment scene. But he would have been seven or eight at the time and I was in my mid to late twenties and the whole thing felt very silly. Mind you, I think that Two Tone was a worldwide revolution when in fact it was probably two or three records and some fucking great badges.

A friend of mine is pitching for some monument sculpture thing in the Valleys somewhere and he’s asked me to come up with a six note melody for bells. I’m not even sure what he’s talking about. I said yes though, of course I did. Always say YES!

My friend Miki sent me a couple fo great youtube things this week.

Regarde!

This one made me cry, stick with it.

Evening thoughts on Bandstocks

Well, it’s up there. Are there five thousand people in the UK who care enough to invest? Are there five thousand people who have even heard the name Martin Carr?

I have no idea.

Seeing my name there, with no money next to it is terrifying but it’s exciting too and I’m glad I’ve done this. I was unsure at first, wondering whether or not I should wait to see what happens with the first acts, maybe leaving it until the next album, but I became really fired up by this idea and I want to be the first.

I do know that some people are dismissing the whole concept out of hand. I’ve found the most common points that have been raised, mainly on the internet, and here I will try to answer them as simply as possible which should be easy because the concept is very simple.

Caroline Sullivan wrote an article for the Guardian website last week. Let’s look at some of the points she raised:

“I predict that music lovers won’t jump at the chance of suddenly turning into the man. For them to be part of that process, receiving profit statements and attending AGMs, would divest music of the romanticism that every fan cherishes.”

Ok, she may have her tongue in her cheek here but the facts are that investors have no say in any aspect of the record they are investing in. The point of this system is to eliminate ‘the man’, whoever that may be. That doesn’t mean that Bandstocks is in competition with record labels, no more than they are with each other anyway. In fact, once the money has been raised the process is almost identical.

“The devil’s liniment that is The X-Factor has done enough damage with its campaign to turn pop into a faceless commodity; no righteous fan is going to want to finish the job by investing in Bandstocks.”

I don’t see the parallel between X-Factor and Bandstocks at all. The investor is merely replacing the record company. I don’t know what record companies Sullivan has visited but they as faceless like any other office. Believe me, there is nothing glamorous about a record label. The album is released the usual way, advertised the usual way, toured the usual way, sold the usual way and charts (or not) the usual way. The only difference is the way that the money is raised.

The acts on Bandstocks have been signed up, just like an act signed to an ordinary record company have been. You can’t just stick your band on the site and hope to raise the cash. To call this a talent contest is to paint the last eighty or so years of the music industry the same colour.

“No matter how much quirky pleasure there may be in bankrolling your own pop star, it’s one of the chanciest things you could sink your money into. Of hundreds of new acts launched every year, the great majority fails to sell”

For your ten pounds you get a download album plus a credit mention (I do doubt these would be on the cover, they would be on an insert or within a booklet). If the project fails to reach it’s intended target THE INVESTOR GETS THEIR MONEY BACK. There is no risk, no chance. I spent money intended for my mortgage on making this record and with a baby on the way I would say that’s a wee risk but this is my life and it’s worth it, I wouldn’t ask anybody else to take anything like that risk on my behalf.

“To pull a name at random from the current issue of Music Week, the 2007 debut album by American rapper Plies sold a total of 222 copies in Britain, and that was with the might of Atlantic Records behind him.”

That’s because Plies is shit. Is she saying that we should continue to stick with record labels because they, with all their money and marketing might, can only sell a couple of hundred records?

“Since your artist’s marketing budget would depend on how much has been invested, she/he might record the best album of the year, only for it to remain unheard because there’s not enough cash for advertising.”

The budget is done at the beginning. It’s all there on the site. If you haven’t budgeted enough for marketing you are a fool. Anyway, as Caroline points out, all the marketing in the world can’t sell a Plies record. If it’s a good record it will be reviewed and played on the radio. Adverts never sold a record.

Robert Andrews on digital media economy site paidConetnt:UK says

“The concept is basically a carbon copy of Sellaband and Slicethepie before it”

Not true. These two models are open to anyone and are full of bands who can’t get signed elsewhere. All the artists on Bandstocks have had offers but have chosen Bandstocks because they believe in it (and because the contract they sign is incredibly artist friendly).

When I was on Radio 5 talking about this a couple of weeks ago, somebody texted in to say:

“Why should we pay your recording costs?”

Well, who do you think pays for them now? The band pay out of their advance which is recoupable and is recouped through sales ie YOU pay for them. All expenditure is recouped by the record company, now more than ever. They used to take it from record sales but now you have to sign away merchandising money and tour fees. Yes, you are paying the studio cost (and ten pounds is quite cheap) but this time YOU will recoup if sales go well. Imagine if Oasis had bankrolled their first album this way, or The Stone Roses, we’d all be rich HA HA HA HA etc

I could go on, please feel free to ask post any questions after this post and I will answer every one. The only people who can make it work is us. It won’t happen by itself and it’s easy to sneer and be cynical. It’s harder to get involved and work at it. Ten pounds and word of mouth and we can be the first.