S.R

2 days to go.

tumblr. I’ve been neglecting you. T in the park happened over 4 weeks ago. It was insane. Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain. Mud, swampy mud. I thought i’d stay nice and dry in the bar marquee. Oh no, I got soaked by the rain pouring off the roof and saturating my as I handed drinks orders out to people. Shocking stuff! Met some amazing people. Maximus, my bar manager. Biggest flirt EVER! A lassie who’s beenliving in Australia for 10 years and happened to be a BIG fan of my favourite local singer songwriter, Michael Cassidy. Kismet I suppose. Also, a sax player from London, living in Glasgow while she studies happens to play in a funk band in which I went on one date with their quirky guitarist. (We both had fun, but it just wasn’t to be.) 

Two weekends after T, I went to work at Wickerman down near the Borders with the events security. I was drafted on for nightshift, and OH MY GOD! Best way to work at the festivals. Work from 10pm to 10am, sleep for 2 - 4 hours (if you can in the roasting hot tent), then get up, get showered and go enjoy the festival. Needless to say, I survived on high caffeine energy drinks ALL weekend. From thursday morning until sunday late evening, I had 5 maybe 6 hours total sleep. I LOVED IT! Working there, and being able to enjoy the festival made me realise that Wickerman is the kind of festival I want to be running/organising when I’m older. Fantastic range in music styles, great family atmosphere and best of all, it had the BEST weather. Dry and sunny from thursday to sunday morning, where it then became overcast, windy and began to rain (but we were getting ready to get the bus home.) 

After Wickerman, well, I’ve been spending A LOT of time with a man. After ditching ‘Taxi Boy’ ,as I shall call him and his horrible angry attitude to life, I’m now officially off the market. ‘The Man’ and I, we got together on the first of July for his birthday, then kept seeing each other regularly after that. We called it and made it official on the 6th of this month after a really fantastic night out to dinner and a gig. I never dreamed that everything I’ve been hoping for would actually come together, and especially not all at the same time.

I start college full time on Monday. That’s just two days away. I’m excited. I haven’t yet felt nervous, but that will arrive on the first morning.  

Record company wise, well theres good and bad news. More bad news than good to be honest, but I’ll fill you in tomorrow.  I’m just going to leave you with a little Michael Cassidy. From his self titled E.P., this is ‘Everybody’s Scared’. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUo54QYN8Pg

t in the park.

So I’m off to work behind the bars at T in the Park. It is forecast to pour with rain at least twice a day for the duration of the weekend. …

I’m still majorly excited for it though. Cannot wait

There is one thing I should say. I’m missing a really fantastic musicians single launch because of my work at T.

Shambles Miller, from Glasgow, is a bearded, eclectic singer/songwriter, plays guitar very very well and his lyrics are full of wit, charm and banter. This is his facebook, : http://www.facebook.com/#!/iamshambles . Go give him a wee listen and if you buy his new single, called Confessions, from here, : http://shamblesmiller.bandcamp.com/album/confessions , he will send you a handwritten letter too.

the perks of being a wallflower.

and in this moment i swear, we are infinite…

I have just heard that quote on the trailer for ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ from the people behind cult movie Juno. I can’t wait for this film to hit the screens in the Autumn, I loved Juno and I’m sure I’ll love this. In the meantime, I shall satisfy my craving, by reading the book.

Oh and if you need persuading, the lovely Emma Watson stars in this. 

and one more thing.

Oh and one more thing… a man. Yes. A real, live, walking and talking man in my life. After five years of being single, I may not be for much longer. It’s the one I met at Coloursfest, the one who noticed that I have ‘a really lovely smile’. We’ll see how it goes, wish me luck tumblr nation! 

some things to look forward to.

So after the whole ‘issue’ with record label owner #2 and having my big spring clean, I’m looking forward to my future. Well, my foreseeable future anyway. These are some things to look forward to…

The 21st birthday celebrations of a good friend.
Working at T in the Park.
Working at Wickerman festival (hopefully).
Another video shoot.
In August I begin studying Music Business at college.
Michael Cassidy’s headline gig at King Tuts. 
Driving lessons around about September.
The tour with the record label.
Brother and Bones gig at Captains Rest.
Ben Howard gig in November (if I can get a ticket from somewhere). 
My 21st birthday in December.  

I’m happy to say I have lot’s of things to look forward to. I’m finding that when something does happen to upset me, I should remind myself of all the good things happening soon, and not to sweat the small stuff or I’ll be stewing in bad feelings for longer than I need to.

feeling better.

You may have noticed my last post was a bit… angry. I apologise. Some things get me really angry, and it can take days for me to work through that anger. Some people get angry when their passed over for promotion at work, some get angry when their picked last for a football team. I get angry when people are condescending, patronising and tell me what to do like I’m a five year old. Yes, that may be slightly immature, that I allow my emotions to rage on for so long for idiotic people, (which I will probably meet many of over the course of my life). There is one thing though, I am 20 years old. I may have grown up a lot in the four years since high school, but I still have a lot more growing up to do, and I look forward to sharing that journey with you.  

I took the weekend, and got over it. Today is Monday and I spent the whole afternoon gutting out my room.  I suppose you can call it having a spring clean in summer. I managed to get rid of two bin bags full of stuff, rubbish that’s been piling up around me, books I’ve read once and will never read again. A few CD’s and DVD’s, the old TV and DVD player (who needs one if you have Virgin on the big screen in the living room and a personal laptop?) and a whole bag full of clothes. The dust and cobwebs are all gone and along with those, one single, solitary spider living behind my chest of drawers. 

So all in all, I feel much better now. 

doubtful.

So I’ve been doing lots of wonderful things with the record label. From experiencing the work that goes into making a music video, to organising events and tours, and lots of planning and business meetings in between. It’s great fun and I love it! 

But here’s the thing. There’s an itch beneath the surface, the elephant in the room that all us interns can feel and regularly talk about, but never to the owners face. It’s one of the owners and his work ethics. 

The company is a start up business, co-owned by two male friends in their early twenties. Owner Number 1; I find to be pretty level headed, hard working, incredibly passionate and is in this for the long haul. Owner Number 2; I feel is only in this for the money (not that we’ve made any yet.) I’ve watched for the past 5 months as #2 has made judgements on us interns, fired some of us without real reason, taken a two week siesta from the company without telling us why, and then coming up with a pathetic excuse for not doing any work for those two weeks. #2 continues to work full time and refuses to contribute anything to the business during the week and, at the weekends when he is available, contributes very little and likes to complain and go off on little rants about certain interns and things that annoy him. I cannot stand it! 

I left my job in retail because of a similar boss, I just can’t work with someone who does so little, and expects everyone else to do the work, while he reaps all the reward. It’s disgusting, and highly un-professional. 

His attitude to work makes me highly doubtful the company will be a success. Which is a shame, because if he left, #1 could make it happen and it’d be a much more comfortable working environment.

You may be wondering where this rant came from. Well I’ve been feeling that way about #2 for a long time, but last night he said something that really made me angry. -

Whilst on facebook last night (my personal profile I should add), I ‘liked’ a post on an artists page. Not 10 minutes later, #2 messaged me saying;

• don’t like their stuff, he’s competition etc and they dont really like our stuff. dnt want our company name anywhere near them

so i replied;   

• this is my personal facebook page, if you dont want the companys name associated with anything i ‘like’ on facebook i can take the companys name off my work bit.

So he replied with yes, delete the part on your profile that associates you with the company. To tell you the truth, I was fuming! The post I had liked on the artists page was about pringles, the crisps. Nothing big or interesting about the music industry, just simply about crisps. 

Facebook, just like Tumblr, are places where I can share my thoughts and opinions without fear of judgement or persecution. Freedom of speech is a human right, and he was blatantly trying to prevent that right. On my personal facebook page I have the right to like any post I want to and post, and share anything I want to as long as it doesn’t break the confidentiality agreement set by the company. I have never once broken this contract and never will. Liking a post on another band, or artists page doesn’t break this contract, and doesn’t cause any negative repercussions for the company. If anything, it may have positive repercussions. The band or artist may see I work for a record label and want to work with us. That’s not going to happen now though, as he instructed me to take it off my page. 

Why is it, throughout my whole life, men never see the bigger picture or look at both sides of an argument. 

picture blogs.

I really don’t understand picture blogs. It tells me nothing about you, and I like to find out about a persons story. I like to read about the daily life’s of people. Normal, ordinary, day to day, people. Such as your neighbour, your local shopkeeper, your teacher, your fellow commuter, the person sitting in the car next to yours at the traffic lights. I like to read about where someone is going, what their doing, what they like, and dislike. Their opinions on everything from relationships, to politics, to money, to music, to history, about the scottish independence vote, to architecture. On rock legends versus pop superstars, to their survival strategy should there ever be a zombie apocalypse. And on, and on, and on.

I am curious about people, and pictures just don’t tell me your story.  

the music video.

On the day I met the video-grapher for the first time, we all ended up going on a recce to scout locations for the new concept. Five of us squashed into the owners tin can of a car and off we went. We found one. A brilliant place. Brand new flat ground. In good weather, it would be eye catching. A really urban looking backdrop. I didn’t offer to be in charge of gaining permission to film there. I was worried I might fail again. But the owner managed it. Somehow. 

Sunday, 20th May dawned bright, sunny and calm. On the Saturday night I had stayed up until after midnight preparing lunches for a team of 16 for the all day video shoot. It was the perfect day. It was the first sunshine of the summer, everyone was in high spirits and the shoot went without a hitch. Over the course of the day, I got to assist with directing. Which was mad fun. Maybe I’ll change my career plan and become a music video director. But, as soon as the video is released, I’ll fill you all in. You never know, you may see it on tv one of these days. 

Presently all I have seen of the finished product is the first 40 seconds. But my god, the difference between an edited piece of film, and an unedited piece is startling. Unedited film looks a lot like it’s a home video being shot, which I never expected. Especially as our video-grapher had a wizard looking camera. 

mass emails and my first failure.

Still catching you up to the present here. This post is about a music video. Yes indeed. Our first, collaborative, company made video and the part I played in it. (No I didn’t actually star in it thank god. Just, the things I did to make it happen.)

So, first things first. An artist or musician will have a track they have chosen as their first release. The track that will get them noticed/make lots of money/resonate on a deep level with their fans. Whatever reason, they’ll have a track, and they’ll want to make a music video to promote it on the social media sites. At present, I can’t go into detail about the video, who’s in it, what the story is, where it was shot or what the tracks even called. Confidentiality agreement you see. What I can tell you is all the things we were going to do, but didn’t do!

So my first job for the music video was, wait for it, to gain permission to film in the location. What location? A football stadium. Christ almighty, how was I going to do that. So began my long, hard, mass email sending journey. Yes, that’s basically all I could do. Send emails. I was told not to ask either Rangers or Celtic (the two biggest clubs in Glasgow), as if one said yes and we filmed there, it may eliminate half of our fan base. Not good. So I emailed places like Partick Thistle, Hampden and a lot of wee smaller football club, talking third division here people. The outcome, not a yes in sight. Hampden said no straight away as they don’t allow filming of any kind in the stadium unless it’s filming of a match/concert. Partick Thistle didn’t bother replying. After waiting over a week for reply’s I went to the owner and he said to try rugby stadiums. So I did. All no’s or no reply’s again. 

I felt so unhappy. My first big thing for the company and I couldn’t do it. I had failed. I was a failure. After about a month of emailing, calling and waiting, I still hadn’t got a yes. So, eventually, the owners started thinking of another concept. The concept we ended up with.