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!
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 