So I had a call from Sally at the Riverfront asking if I could film something wonderfully christmassy and cheesy. I was coming to the end of the schools Christmas concerts edits so I felt maybe I need a break from that kind of thing, but then she told me the details. Three elvis impersonators from the Porthcawl Elvis Festival were supposed to be performing for an old peoples home, but because of the change in restrictions, they could no longer do it. But sally thought we could perhaps utilise their time and put a quick video together regardless. She’d like to green screen the Elvises (Elvi?) Into a sleigh and have them fly over Graceland/Las Vegas and Newport with them singing ‘Walking in a Newport Wonderland’. I said ‘you had me at Elvis’. After another conversation I realised that they expected me to essentially direct the whole thing - not just capture it. I’ve been hoping to direct something and I figured what better way to start than with a King. I wrote down some ideas and had a look through all of my Christmas/winter effects on the video editing software and devised some sort of plan. When the day came, the 3 Elvi were all in good spirits and ready for rock’n’roll. I made them record a quick intro, referring to themselves as the three wise kings (which I thought was hilarious at least) and then got to directing. I was instructing them on their moves, reactions, smouldering and actions. Not gonna lie, it felt brilliant. I’d never done a film shoot where I had the creative control and very few restrictions. To be honest, I know they wanted it really cheesy, and cheesy is really easy to do! It was a really fun day and there were a few positives to take away. Firstly, the riverfront staff got to see me direct and create something fun and different to the usual stuff I film for them. Secondly, It was just a great laugh, but most importantly, the producer of the Liv Festival was present all day, and we had a good chat. He is producer of various projects and also writes/produces theatre. He asked if I could be a sounding board for a future project of his (vampire festival in London) in regards to visuals which is AWESOME and I’m hoping to build a nice relationship that I might either work on, or at least shadow the production of one of his plays/musicals in London. A good day.
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The vast majority of my work requires editing on a computer. I am fortunate to have a house with 2 bedrooms, one of which I use as a work space. However, the plan was to rent an office that I could work at so that the second bedroom can become something else. I was initially going to rent from Ratio Studios, but they are going to charge upwards of 250 pounds per month and I have looked elsewhere and it is all either more expensive or not suitable. I started looking into building a garden office as they have grown in popularity lately and it seems like a popular option for the modern working household. I can physically separate my work life from my home life but still have easy access to my work whenever I'm home. If I were to pay the 250 per month to rent an office, over 2 years it would cost me £6,000 on rent alone, not including travel (40 minute drive). At the end of those two years I would simply be down the costs and although I can use it against my tax, it still seems too much money. £6,000 could get me a really nice 4x3m insulated garden office and I could get the funding via a bank loan and pay it back over several years. If I paid it back over 5 years it would cost around 90-100 pounds per month, and at the end of that time I will still have the office. This is something to seriously consider for my professional development and the also the benefit of my home. If anyone reading this wishes to donate a couple thousand pounds, just give me an email and I'll be happy to assist! After my successful performance at CURAD, I was approached by another art gallery who were going to be putting on an open event and they asked if I’d be able to perform for them. Despite the work deadlines I had at the time, I figured that I’d just go for it and sacrifice a Sunday dinner with the in laws to catch up instead. The communication was good leading up to the event and the folks at Pallet seemed enthusiastic about my music - they’d checked out my spotify (another good reason for turning to the dark side is spotify easier to access that band camp for the general person???) And they were eager for me to perform for them. I was chuffed, I didn’t know what to expect, but I imagined it would be a similar event to CURAD. It wasn’t. The event was brilliant and everyone was lovely, the hosts were fantastic and the event went really well as far as I'm aware! But from a musician point of view, they may as well have had a mp3 player running. Maybe I just got my hopes up after the high of the CURAD show, but it was a much bigger space and most people were passively listening. There were 3 people who actively watched my performance and there were times where I asked them for requests and stuff which was nice, they even came up to me after my slot and said they really enjoyed it - thats always a really nice feeling. Because of the relationship between myself and the audience was … not really a thing, I didn’t tell any stories but it felt good to open my back catalogue of songs I think I can remember how to play. I threw in some golden oldies from Mumford & Sons, Damien Rice and Tracy Chapman. It was a little demoralising to be completely frank, I think my expectations got the better of me and I overestimated what it would be like. Next time I’ll try to just estimate and not go over. Overall it was quite humbling and an opportunity to practice some old songs. So I have been wanting to perform my new material and therefore messaged my good friend Teddy Hunter who runs an art space in Cardiff called Curad. Teddy said that and artist will have an opening night soon so I could perform at that, sorted. The day came around and to be completely honest, I wasn’t really ‘feeling it’. I had spent the whole week in various primary schools filming their Christmas concerts, so I already had a headache and it was a long drive to Cardiff. I parked in the NCP so I knew I’d have to remortgage to afford the parking. I arrived about an hour before I needed to be at the venue so I got my guitar out in my car and had a quick run through of a couple pieces. When the time came I got up and headed across the road to the venue. Tyr’s work was great, he’d really used the whole space to engulf the audience into his artwork. We had a nice quick chat and he was really laid back about where I performed in the space and stuff. So I set up my little speaker which I had borrowed from the Riverfront and did a quick sound check on my own. It felt weird to be sound cheking myself. Not is a ‘I’m too goof for this’ way, but I think it’d been a very long time since I’d had to do it, mainly because I soundcheck people at theatres, at my recent gigs there’s been a dedicated sound technician and so it just felt a bit alien is all. I was going to try something this evening that I hadn’t done before. In one of the song stories, it talks about a relationship in high school, so like 13-14 year olds, its based of my own experience and the stories probably the most closest to the truth out of all of my stories. Basically there are a lot of break ups and getting back togethers. So, I want to involve the audience in some way, and to do that I encouraged people (before the performance) to secretly write down a break up line and fold it up and put it in the box. I also asked them to write down an insult and put that into a another box. The time came around and I got my guitar and the boxes ready on a table next to me, plus a bottle of water. I did a quick 1-2, uh1-2-3-4 into the mic and the audience started to gather around. I’df arranged some chairs and benches for people to sit on. There were quite a few people there, maybe 30ish, and I only really knew about 4 of them. I like it when the happens. Anyways, I’d planned before the show to hold the mic out of that stand, almost in more of a ‘stand up comedian’ type way, because I think that lets the audience know subconsciously that there’ll be a little more talking that songing. So I’d played couple songs and said some stories and it was going well. I think I did some improv about Spotify and stuff because my music was now on spotify but at the same time I don’t agree with spotify and stuff… It came to the audience participation song and I asked for a volunteer. A lady (Grace) in the front row put her had up so I invited her into the seat next to me. I then asked the audience if anyone wanted to be in a relationship with this lady. Another lady (Kat) put her hand up and then sat in a chair the other side of me. I explained to them how they are both in the same school and they are in a very very very serious relationship, its been almost three whole months. Both Grace and Kat were responding really well and so were the audience. I thought I’d get them involved in the storytelling a bit more, so I asked them when the first realised they had feelings for one another. “When she pulled my hair in the playground.” Said Grace. “When she fingered me behind the bikesheds” replied Kat. It was hilarious and the audience and everyone were all paying 100% attention to this little story that we were unravelling. Throughout the story, Kat breaks up with Grace on numerous occasions, each time reading a break up line from the suggestions box. You could sense the audience being engrossed in the story and wanting to hear their own suggestion. Grace would then always reply with an insult from her suggestion box. I feel like as I do this more and more, I will find a happy medium of timescale in relation to how funny is it to make the audience wait for a potentially hilarious of just as likely boring break up like/insult. But it felt good this time, though I did forget to include some parts of the story as I was distracted by the excitement of the suggestion boxes! Overall it went great and the audience participation really helped to break up the performance as a whole. There are a couple positives to take forward from this performance. The first being that the audience participation is fun and seemed to really get the audience even more engaged with my performance. Secondly, in regards to the whole ‘to script or not to script’ the show conversation that is happening in my head, this show made me feel like I didn’t need to script it. There were so many off the cuff comments and ad lib moments that turned out to be pretty funny. It’s helped me grow in confidence as a ‘comedic’ performer. I still would use the term comedian though.
So there are many ethical arguments and conversations around the business model of Spotify. It is simply unfair payment in regards to the work musicians put in to creating a body of work. And if I had an award winning, global following of dedicated fans then I would do my best to take spotify down.
BUT Spotify could be seen as quite a decent tool for an up and comer like myself. If I were to get a song of mine on a playlist within spotify, that could widen my audience quite considerably. It’s a moral dilemma, but, I think for me and my music, it seems like a good move to make it available on the streaming site. This is also a big step for Araby as an artist, becoming verified on Spotify (and other streaming services) really improves the professionalism and the way you are presented as an artist in the real world, its also arguably one of the easiest ways to access music, so if I just tell people I'm on spotify the chances are they already have the app and will just type in my name and boom I'm there. |
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January 2022
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