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…
GEORGE LUKE 