Groningen

I’m in the North of Holland this weekend, giving a presentation at something called Lopend Vuur. It’s a music industry thing, and I explain it a little bit on my New Music Strategies website.

It’s a part of the country I haven’t been to before. I’ve visited Amsterdam a number of times, and I’ve been to Hilversum and the Hague, but I haven’t ventured north to Friesland before.

After the usual shorter-than-my-bus-ride-to-work plane trip from Birmingham to Amsterdam, I took a train from Schiphol to Amersfoort, then another from Amersfoort to Groningen, where I met Lykle (pron. Lee’-kler) from Lopend Vuur. The event itself is in Leeuwarden, actually in Friesland (Fryslân) but I’m staying one city over in Groningen.

Lykle - looking a bit Dutch

Lykle’s instructions for finding him must have something to do with the Dutch sense of humour. He said he’d be the one in the black coat, with a black bicycle. Of course, so was everyone else.

We went straight to the local student television station (Groningen’s a university town), where I was interviewed about the pitch (like I knew anything…) and Ard who had set the whole thing up got a chance to explain the whole deal.

Ard explains Lopend Vuur

The student TV studio was also a bar (good way to get them to turn up, if you ask me) and so we hung out and enjoyed the acoustic set by one of the bands from this weekend’s event, AudioTransparent.

Two members of AudioTransparent, live on the sofa

Popped back to keyboardist/vocalist Gijs’s place to use his studio setup. I’d promised to do a voicejob for a friend back in New Zealand. So there I am saying ‘Welcome to XYZ Insurance company, please press 1 to be placed in a priority queue…’ and I’m in the living room of someone who could quite conceivably be the next big thing out of Europe on the world pop music stage.

And every now and then, I have to stop because a motorcycle went past on the street outside.

Then a few of us, Ritzo (AudioTransparent’s assigned expert mentor/coach for the Lopend Vuur project), Lykle, Gijs and I head out to get me into the hotel and get a bite to eat. It turns out we nearly lost the hotel booking because we should have checked in by 3 - but after a bit of to and fro, I dumped my stuff in the room (basic, but more than sufficient) and headed to the restaurant.

I ate rabbit for the first time in decades. It bit back. I managed to chip one of my two fake teeth on a bit of bone, and I’m a bit worried I’ve got a big dentistry bill coming up. It didn’t fall out, but it’s shredding my tongue, and I wouldn’t mind getting that sorted out soon. Serves me right for eating cute and furry creatures, rather than the big, ugly ones everyone else seems to prefer.

Ritzo & Lykle

We followed it up with a trip to the local Irish pub, on the grounds that they had good Scotch whisky (Lagavulin, in fact, so I was happy…). There was even a traditional Irish pub band playing - so we didn’t stay too long…

True to its name, the Friesland Hotel (to my ears, the ‘Freeze-land’) was cold. I hardly slept. Just as well, really — because the presentation I gave this morning needed some serious panelbeating to get it into shape.

People liking my presentation

And so I gave my presentation, and it seemed to go well. People said nice things about it and made the right noises at the right time.

I’ve picked up a large number of promo CDs and I’ve been interviewed by media outlets big and small and now it’s time for a drink.

After dinner last night, Bobbie and I went with Sam to see Alice Russell live at the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath. Great venue for live music, by the way. Alice Russell’s an amazing soul/funk vocalist and, among other things, fronts the Quantic Soul Orchestra.

We left Jake at home with his friends Ethan and Anna, a packet of biscuits, several stern warnings and rules and some videos to watch. Of course they were very well behaved. At least, I can see no evidence of damage, loss or foul play.

We stopped at Juliet’s place just down the road, and she came with us to the gig. We arrived way too early — around 9pm. She didn’t hit the stage until nearly 11.30pm. So we had a drink first, sat outside, talked to people, sorted the world out and generally had a nice time.

Have you seen this man?

When the band finally started playing, we went in and made our way to the front. Sam said he’d follow us in. That was the last we saw of him. Not sure what happened there. Not that I’m overly concerned…

[Update: Sam has reported in. All is well. He was hit with a sudden and inexplicable illness within minutes of us leaving him alone, and crawled on home to bed. He blames the Quorn tacos.]

I’d seen Alice Russell at Shambala, and thought she was really pretty great, though her stage presence didn’t have quite the same power as her voice… but Bobbie had missed that performance, so we made a point of going this time.

Pretty much exactly the same set, with one member of the band swapped out for another. The guy playing the electric violin wasn’t involved this time - and a backing vocalist was added. People danced, and everyone seemed to be having a very nice time.

Afterwards, Bobbie and I popped in to see Clutch for a chat and a sample of his bargain Laphraoig. Collette, Clutch’s partner, was fast asleep because of an early shift at work - but Clutch is 100% rock & roll so he was up past midnight. We’re yet to meet Collette. Clutch has arranged our meetings so far to coincide with her late shifts, because she’s not really that interested in whisky. Even a little bit.

But then he had a thought: “Is Bobbie interested in shoes, at all…?”

I think they’ll get on fine.

More Alice Russell photos at my Flickr set.

I mentioned the other day that I’d had a drink with my friend Clutch - and that we’d discovered a Glenfiddich Toasted Oak limited edition that we quickly became quite fond of…

Well, it being payday yesterday, there was a grocery shopping expedition at Tesco (it’s convenient, all right? Where’s the Waitrose near here?), where I found a bottle of that very drink for under £25 — so it ended up coming home with me. I texted Clutch with the good news, and he replied saying he’d just had a similar bargain find: a Laphraoig for £17.

I suspect we’ll be meeting up again soon.

A new world record was set today (28 September), with a bottle of whisky selling at auction for a remarkable £29,400.

The Bowmore single malt whisky is the oldest bottle of Bowmore known to be in existence and is believed to have been bottled on Islay around 1850 by W & J Mutter. It was being sold on behalf of a private owner during the fine and rare whisky wine and port auction held at McTears auctioneers in Glasgow.

Purchased by an anonymous telephone bidder, lot number 152 was the highlight of the action recommended to reach between £15,000 and £20,000.

Read the article.

It’s not so much a question of ‘what should I write about?’ as it is ‘where should I start?’. It’s been a week of change and activity this week. Some stuff I’m not even allowed to talk about yet, so you can imagine how significant those changes could be. What I can tell you is that a group of us, led by Professor Tim Wall in the Media Department, have heard official word that we’ve been successful in our bid for an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Knowledge Transfer Fellowship.

The project is the single biggest one that the AHRC has awarded (close to half a million pounds), it is the largest research grant of any kind in the faculty, and it makes Tim the only person in the country with two simultaneous AHRC funded projects - the other being a research project with the BBC about radio audiences online. I’m involved in both.

For us in the world of academia, this is considered Very Big News.

The Fellowship project will buy out half of my time for two years, starting with in February, to work with local music businesses and organisations, look at what they do, and help them develop new and innovative ideas that will help them make more money.

The idea is that it’s a knowledge exchange. They get new ideas from people like me who have nothing better to do than sit around and read, think about new technological developments and figure out what it all means. In return, we get first hand experience of what is commonly thought of as ‘the real world’ so we can get a feel for how these ideas might work in actual practice, rather than just in the realms of theory.

Not sure how it’s all going to shake out, but between the handful of us, we’re going to be working with about 20 different organisations, from community radio stations to punk labels, promotions companies to online music retailers.

In other news:
Teaching started this week - a whole new intake of fresh-faced students. I’m teaching Radio Documentaries (2nd year practical), Music Online (2nd year practical), Music Industries Skills (1st year practical) and The Music Business (2nd year theory). I’m also supervising a handful of third year dissertation students. So far so good…

I went to a place called Great Malvern this week, to give a talk about online music marketing for the Musicians Union. I wish I’d taken my camera. It was a really gorgeous town.

My record label is taking its first few wobbly steps towards being an actual real thing. I’m “in talks” with a number of artists. That number, currently, is 3. I’m not even sure that ‘label’ is the right word for it, but I can’t really think of a better way to talk about what I’ll be doing. Essentially, it’s about applying the kinds of things I talk about on New Music Strategies to a number of artists that I’m really enthusiastic about.

And I’m not even going to be signing artists, as much as I’ll be licensing releases. But record label is an easy way to think about it. It’s all baby steps at this point. Chances are you won’t see any real proof of activity till next year.

I had a really good evening with my friend Clutch from the band (x) is greater than (y) the other night. He’s a fellow whisky enthusiast, and we discovered recently that a local pub I seldom go into, The Prince of Wales (or, since the W fell off, ‘The Prince of Ales’), has a very good selection of single malts… some we hadn’t encountered before.

There’s a Glenfiddich 12 year-old ‘Toasted Oak’ which was quite drinkable, and made a really nice change. Neither of us had even heard of it, and so we made it our business to become acquainted. We finished with a Lagavulin 16, which is pretty much my desert island whisky.

Jake’s away in Germany this week, so Bobbie and I have had the place to ourselves. It’s been nice, but I think I’m ready for him to come home now. It’s his job to do the dishes.