Writer, Audio Creator, Curator
As promised, I’ve started packaging the artist interviews I did at Midem a couple of weeks ago into podcasty radio features for your listening enjoyment.
Here’s the first one; an interview with Budi, lead guy with the Singaporean drum ensemble Wicked Aura. He was great fun to talk to, and as for the band… well, you really have to see them play live!
Have a listen, and enjoy!
Day 3, Morning: I’m trying a couple of things differently today. First of all, I’ve decided to make the radical move of leaving my laptop at home – and so am depending entirely on my iPad for all my work today. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes…
I’ll be jotting things down more or less as they happen. First, though, a recap of yesterday…
The day went pretty well, for the most part. For some reason, all the people at this thing who are more interested in saving the planet (or just being normal) than in living the rock n roll dream seemed to gravitate towards me. I’m not complaining for one bit; it was great chatting with people who aren’t up themselves! I had a lovely lunch with Van Taylor (a jazz musician and cultural ambassador from the US; one of the Three 2 Go acts I interviewed the previous day). We talked about various humanitarian efforts we’d either been involved in or witnessed at work. Later, I caught up with Anthony Brightly again, who’s doing some big charity work in the Caribbean (more on that in future blog posts).
In fact, the closest I came to rock n roll excess yesterday was attending a press conference on board a luxury yacht (for the University of Reading’s MBA in Music course at Henley) – and the crappy weather here killed any mystique that would normally have had stone dead! Still, I got to chat to a high level banker from Coutt’s, who told me how they were giving bursaries to the most promising students on the course. 25 grand to learn how to be a manager. I’ll let those of you who are managers tell me whether that’s good value for money…
I finally got to see some live music last night. Earlier in the day, I’d interviewed a couple of acts from Singapore: singer and multi-instrumentalist Tei Kewei, and Budi, leader of the band Wicked Aura. Their showcase at Club Da Da Da – together with a few other artists from Singapore – was fantastic. Wicked Aura in particular are a spectacle to behold; ten guys playing just about every shape and size of drum imaginable, with a strong punk attitude and a charismatic front man. Bloody brilliant…
I haven’t got much on my schedule today, apart from going to hear what Mark Ronson has to say in his ‘Visionary Monday’ talk this afternoon – and of course to see how far I get using only my iPad to work today…
While I was going about my business yesterday, there was this one guy I kept bumping into outside the conference venue. He could easily have just been one of the many African guys hanging about outside, except that he wasn’t selling umbrellas. Instead, he was handing out flyers advertising his new album! His name was Prince Kestamg and he’s originally fom Cameroon. Strangely, he didn’t have a badge, and so couldn’t get in. But that didn’t stop him networking like mad outside…
The best track on his CD was a cover of San Fan Thomas’ song African Typic Collection – a classic that could be considered one of the forerunners of today’s ‘Afrobeats’ craze (I-bloody-HATE-that-word *deep breath*). When I finally did get to interview Prince this afternoon, what was supposed to be a simple mic level check turned into an acapella singing session. Have a listen… http://abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/swf/fullsize_player.swf
Just after 3pm: Got mixed feelings about the ‘Visionary Monday’ session I was in. I guess I was expecting to hear Mark Ronson talk more about the creative process, rather than what was basically a long plug for Coca Cola’s involvement in the London Olympics. Even Ronson seemed to be taking his role as Coke spokesman to extremes, dressed in a red shirt with matching belt and socks. Still, the short time he spent explaining how me produced his Olympics tune (using sound samples from athletes around the world) was quite inspiring. i must admit I lost interest after that with all the marketing speak. I guess this was just another reminder that MIDEM is primarily about business, rather than music.
Just after 5pm: Just did another impromptu interview with another African artist – a Zambian singer based in Germany, who goes by the name of Mister Kibs. He has a showcase at 10pm tonight; I’m torn between staying in Cannes to see it, or going home early and spending the rest of the evening editing audio.
And how has my “leave the laptop at home and just use the iPad” experiment gone? Well, I’ve certainly had less of a load to carry about, and more space in my bag for freebies! I have had to resort to using the press room’s computers for uploading pics from my camera (and eventually for posting this blog, as it failed when I tried to do it via the WordPress iPad app). On the whole, it hasn’t been a bad experience but I think I’m still too attached to my lappy to abandon it completely!
PS. The experiment kinda went awry when the WordPress iPad app wouldn’t let me access what I’d written. Thankfully, I also had it on Evernote…
Saturday night, in an apartment somewhere just outside Cannes…
It’s been quite a full day today, and a very productive one – which is great, given that I didn’t have much planned, but came ended up doing about ten interviews. I’m back in my apartment with the NRJ Music Awards on the telly as I write this. The awards had just started at the Palais des Festivales as Day 1 of MIDEM was winding down – which made getting out of the Palais was a bit of a pain, what with all the massed hordes of starstruck French ‘yoofs’ who’d crowded the place hoping to catch a glimpse of the likes of Mika, David Guetta, Shakira, Justin Bieber and LMFAO as they turned up to collect a gong or two… WHAT?!?!?!?
Sorry – just had a temporary ‘wtf?’ moment there. Some lady called Shy’M just won the award for best French female act… and for a minute, I thought she was topless! As you were…
All the interviews I did today came about from chance meetings with people whilst hanging about in the exhibition area and media centre. After searching in vain to find any African exhibitors, two South African singers came up to me out of the blue and introduced themselves (ironically, this happened seconds after I’d tweeted “Dear #Midem, where are you hiding all the Africans?”). Zaki Ibrahim and Pebbles were both great fun to interview; I’ll be posting podcasts featuring those interviews and their music in the very near future.
I’ll also be posting (once it”s all nicely packaged) some interviews I did with a handful of artists from New York, all of whom belong to a label called Three 2 Go Records. Great guys (and ladies) doing a nice line in soul, funk, jazz and more. I was in the middle of interviewing them en masse when along came an old friend – reggae man Anthony Brightly. It was at that point that I thought to myself, “I do believe this MIDEM is going to be a good one.”
My big press conference of the day was one Sony had to launch Sony Network Entertainment (their rival to the Spotifys of the world). Ralph Simon (CEO of Mobilium International Advisory) was moderator; on the panel you had Tim Schaaff (president of Sony Network Entertainment), Denis Kooker (another Sony exec), Paul Jones from Omnifone, and Stephen White, president of Gracenote. To be honest, I think I learnt more from chatting to Stephen White during the drinks reception afterwards than I did from the roundtable itself. Way too much stating the obvious (such as Schaaff informing us that ‘the Cloud’ was, in fact, the Internet), and questions from the moderator that bordered on the inane (“how do I take my music from my living room to my car?” You could try a piece of antique technology we used to call a cassette recorder, mate).
In contrast, my chat with Stephen White was very enlightening. Like anyone else who’s ever put a CD into their computer, I’ve been aware of Gracenote’s existence without actually knowing anything about them. The figures Steve quoted when I asked him how big their music database was were mind-boggling. You can hear some of that conversation here:
If you can not see this chirbit, listen to it here http://chirb.it/N7cv2g
Check this out on Chirbit
I should have gone to see Zaki Ibrahim’s showcase at the Club Dadada tonight, but MIDEM ended around 7pm and I didn’t want to stay in Cannes twiddling my thumbs until 10pm when her gig was supposed to start (and the weather was still rather wet and cold). So I’m home, having consumed much of a big pizza… and now Johnny Hallyday has taken to the stage at the NRJ awards show. Vive le pop Français…
It’s the last few days of January – and for various movers, shakers, schemers, skeezers, grafters, grifters and other types of character you come across in the music business, it’s time once again to decamp to the south of France for MIDEM, the international music industry conference. For a third time, I’ve managed to blag myself a press pass to the conference – and as I write, I’m waiting for my flight to Nice, from where I’ll make my way on to Cannes where MIDEM takes place.
The last time I went to cover MIDEM, I flew to Cannes with Easyjet. This time round, I’m flying Business class (I’m in the BMI Business Class lounge right now – and believe me, it is the… something you’re not supposed to mention in airports). While I would love to make out that this is because I’ve moved up in the world since 2009, the truth is that BMI were doing a special promotion allowing people to fly Business Class to Nice for the price of an Economy ticket (sometimes it pays not to delete spam emails).
If you’re passionate about music, MIDEM is the sort of thing you develop a love/hate relationship with. If you look hard enough, you will find some talent worth writing home about. But at the end of the day, it’s primarily about the business of music, rather than the music itself – which would explain why one of the press conferences I’ve been invited to attend is from a university plugging its MBA course for people who want to work in the music industry. Not to a music course, mind you, but a business course. And this press conference is taking place on a luxury yacht. And record label bosses still complain that they’re not making any money…
Anyway, it’s easy to get cynical. My mission over the next four days is to find new music that stirs the soul. That makes you want to sing, dance, jump up and down and all the other stuff good music is supposed to do for you. I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open, and reporting back to you on any goodies I do find out there. After all, je suis un rock journalist…
GEORGE LUKE 