Is MySpace finally dead in the water?

Thought I'd draw you into the conversation with that provocatively titled post...!

I made the decision last last to finally upload one of my solo bass tracks (the most recent post on my Solo Bass Podcast, Calling Out) to my MySpace page. Until now, I've used MySpace purely as a promotional tool for my work as a session player, ie; the bulk of the work I do playing for other people. My music player therefore featured tracks by various artists I've recorded with over the last few years, including Clare Teal, The Divine Comedy, A Girl Called Eddy, Chris Difford and Ian Shaw. I thought it was time to introduce more elements from my solo project. I'm getting closer to wanting to start work on the actual finished album, and once I have a product to sell I'm going to need as many people to know about it as possible.

Which brings me to my first dilemma. I have quite a few 'friends' on MySpace (3,452 is todays count). My current music profile has been active for almost two years now. Most days I get a few friend requests from various bands and solo artists who seemingly have no relation to what I do and more than likely have never heard me play. Very occasionally they attach a message introducing themselves, or saying how/why they found me which is always appreciated. I make a point of sending these folk a little thankyou message/comment, as I believe these are the people I'm really aiming to engage with online.

I'm guessing that most of the MySpace 'promotion' tools that other bands use to contact their friends are via the blogs and bulletins. I stopped using my MySpace blog a few months ago in favour of this Blogger site, which is both far more interactive and has myriad sharing/subscribing possibilities thanks to Feedburner. I found that virtually nobody would read the blogs on my MySpace profile; but the minute I posted the same blog on Blogger, various people would start subscribing and leaving comments. Which is the whole point of blogging; engaging in a conversation. I seriously doubt whether the majority of people that visit my MySpace page actually hang around long enough to read the blog, let alone listen to all the music.

The bulletin system is fundamentally flawed as a promotional tool. Once a user has more than 1,000 'friends', they no longer receive bulletins. Which is entirely sensible. Before I got to that stage, my MySpace home page was something akin to my junk mail inbox, littered with a variety of messages inviting me to "Come listen to my new song" or "Check out my new video". Frankly, I don't have the time and if I was that interested in your band, then I would have made the effort to check your page under my own steam. I do make a point of visiting several key MySpace profiles regularly to see what new projects are on the go. In fact, the ability to receive updates from selected users only (starting with your top friends as default) has been incredibly welcome navigationally. Thus, if I was to send out a bulletin on MySpace informing my friends of a solo show or a new release, chances are that 90% of them would never see it.

This is my main issue with MySpace. It's complete lack of interactivity and flexibility. My Reverb Nation page has become the hub for all my various social media dabblings. My blog is imported straight into Reverb Nation, as are my status updates via Twitter, which means that the page is kept alive and vibrant without me even having to log in every day. The music player behaves exactly as it should, making sharing my music clear and simple. Unlike the MySpace music player...

Last night's uploading was a fiasco, let me tell you... My good friend Eddy was on the phone to me last week in a panicked state over the demise of her music player on MySpace. It had disappeared entirely. A little investigation concluded that her page was not the only one to suffer this glitch. As I uploaded Calling Out, I had the distinct feeling I was in for trouble. although the track uploaded properly, the associated artwork didn't (and it seems still hasn't, despite two subsequent attempts). And the fact that I designated the track a free download has been totally ignored. Nearly 15 hours later, the track still cannot be downloaded and plays with no artwork. Rubbish.

The plodding user interface is a nightmare to navigate and frankly I've had enough. My most recent gripe with the site (and judging by the plethora of similar exclamations on Twitter) is it's insistence on plaguing users with drop-down banners which completely obscure the page you're viewing. And more worryingly in the last few weeks it seems that several of the links you click on to navigate around the site suddenly transport you into another page entirely, loading up some promo clip. Now, this is really not something I would have expected from a 'social networking' site. Over the last few months MySpace has been almost entirely overrun by corporate nonsense and it is undeniably getting worse every day. I give it another couple of months before all those bloody awful 'Adult Friend Finder' type ads start encroaching on MySpace. Seriouly, it wouldn't surprise me. We're 3/4 of the way there already.

A few days ago I sent a MySpace friend request to a band called Nohno, a fantastic industrial-electro/ambient duo from Newcastle. I don't remember how I came across their music (although I suspect they cropped up on Last.fm), but I really liked the sounds they were creating and wanted to know more. I received a message back from them yesterday asking me to let them know how I found them and basically to confirm I was not some kind of MySpace friend-gathering machine. So I replied and the conversation began. This is a rare occurrence on MySpace and I took the opportunity to point Dean in the general direction of Reverb Nation.

I don't think it'll be long before more musicians become as disillusioned with MySpace as I am, and will start to investigate other avenues to engage with their audience. And I think Reverb Nation will provide the most effective template.

Anyway, enough of this ranting. As Stephen Fry says in his last excellent Podgram, an angry article writes itself. And I shall duly leave it there.

So how have the changes in MySpace over the last few months effected your perception of the site? Have you, like me, been forced to migrate elsewhere? I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Until next time.

Simon x

The Road Less Travelled.. On Tour With Clare Teal, Part I

It's been a busy time for the Clare Teal band of late. Having performed a week at London's prestigious Ronnie Scotts whilst I was on tour with The Divine Comedy and Maggie Reilly a little while ago, Clare has continued zipping up and down the country playing to packed houses.

I really felt compelled to write a little blog about the two shows we just played over the weekend. They really couldn't have been more different. Serious chalk and cheese scenario. Fantastic blog material! But first, let me tell you about some of the other shows we've played recently...

We had a little run starting in Edinburgh's Queens Hall on the 10th, then coming back down via Bewdley on the 11th to the Cambridge Arts Theatre on the 12th. The first two shows were just Clare and the trio, until we were joined by Colin and AD in Cambridge.

The Queens Hall in Edinburgh is a great venue. Muddy drove Clare, Mike Gorman and myself up to Edinburgh (thank god, it's a real schlep), to be met by the wonderful Tom Gordon on drums. Tom had played with Clare before with the BBC Big Band. He's an amazing musician and he played a storming gig. The show was organised by Scottish jazz vocalist Todd Gordon, who took great care of us during our stay. Maggie Reilly and co came over to see the show and meet the band, which was a real treat. It's always good to see some familiar faces when you're so far away from home. It was also lovely to finally meet my Twitter buddy Baxter Tocher and his wife Anne. Clare is planning to do more shows in Scotland in the near future, we had a great time and I'm really looking forward to getting up there again soon.

We drove back down to play a show as part of the Bewdley Festival the following day (we really clocked up a few miles that weekend!). The gig was at the Ramada Hotel and was sold out. Which was great. We were lucky to be joined by Ralph Salmins on drums this time. It's always a joy to play with Ralph.

We've played the Cambridge Arts Theatre a number of times before. In fact, I'm guessing Clare plays there at least once every year. It's a lovely little theatre right in the centre of town. The staff and crew are fantastic, there's always a really friendly atmosphere at that place. Colin and AD were back with us for the full on show. We'd been incredibly lucky food-wise on this little run and the Cambridge show provided one of highlights thanks to a couple of Clare's regulars who arrived at the gig with a selection of cakes and muffins they'd baked especially for us. Let me tell you folks, Rocky Road is my new favourite thing. You can't really go wrong with chocolate, marsh mallows, nuts and rice crispies. Seriously good. They're coming to the Durham show next week and frankly, I can't wait to see what delights they have in store for us...

Right then. Down to business. The real meat and potatoes of this blog post...

Last weekend we played two shows that really couldn't have been more different. The first was up in York at the Theatre Royal. The second was at The Broadway in Barking. You can probably see where this is going...

Playing a one-off show somewhere like York is an all-day affair. It takes over eight hours to drive up there and back, which is a long time to spend in the car when you have to play a show. But it's part of the job and you soon get used to the driving. To be honest I love driving anyway, it's where I listen to most of my music. The day I got a new car stereo with an aux. input for my iPod was a seriously happy one and it's totally revolutionised the whole driving experience. Anyone who knows me well will be aware of my obsessive iPod fixation. It contains my entire music collection meticulously (some may call it anally) organised and labelled so I have everything to hand. I never leave the house without it.

Anyway, this was the first time Clare had played the Theatre Royal. It's a 1300 seater and we had well over 650 in, which was the largest crowd we'd drawn in York thus far and apparently this was an amazing turnout for that venue... great news! The theatre is a beautiful old Victorian building which has some parts dating back to the eighteenth century (I'm stealing this info from their website, obviously!). Playing in front of such a big crowd with Clare is a riot; she really knows how to handle the audience and she had them in the palm of her hand from start to finish. The staff and crew couldn't have been more helpful. Also, they have a fantastic scheme in place where their performances are piped live via the local Hospital Radio to the patients. What a great idea! There was a real community spirit and friendliness to the place that made our visit all the more enjoyable. We had some great food, whatever we wanted from the bar, couldn't have been treated better and the show itself was fantastic with a massive and appreciative audience... You get the picture? Good. Then we went to Barking...

For some reason (and I don't think it would take a genius to work out what it is..), Barking council have decided to put on a series of shows every Sunday as part of their 'Molten Festival' at The Broadway, a little arts centre right in the middle of Barking; just off the North Circular. The aim of these shows it seems is to promote some kind of cross-cultural, multi-disciplinary 'Say No To Prejudice/Racism/enter Issue here' hippy love-in, in the form of a mini festival. I say mini festival because essentially the evening was presented like a variety show, and I think ultimately it was the programming that was the night's downfall..

First on was some kind of African drumming group, closely followed by a whirling dervish. Okay... Then there was some kind of (allegedly) comedic sketch which frankly fell on it's arse, as did the long-winded performance poetry of the MC who came on afterwards to introduce Clare. After our set was a short break to turn the stage around for, wait for it..... The Blockheads!! O yes! Never before (and probably never again!) have two more dissimilar bands played back to back on one gig.

Baring in mind we'd played to a busy house the previous night and considering the plethora of acts on at the Barking show, the audience was incredibly small. It looked like around sixty people. The festival organisers said they'd sold around two hundred tickets, but there's no way we had that many in. We were all slightly concerned about going on in front of a potentially hostile group of Blockheads fans (Clare hadn't even been advertised on the bill until the last minute it seemed). In fact Chris made the bold statement "We're coming off stage the minute the first bottle hits the stage!" in the green room just before we took to the stage...

We were met largely with disinterest to begin with, but as always Clare managed to win over the crowd during our 45 minute set. It's virtually impossible not enjoy a Clare Teal gig. Even for a non-jazz crowd, Clare's mixture of humour combined with a great performance with a top-notch band guarantees a great night out. I know it's a cliche, but there really is something for everyone (can't believe I just wrote that.. sorry). 

After we came off stage, one of the organisers came up to me as I packed up my bass and asked me how I thought it went. I told her that it was a bit weird, but I thought the audience had a good time. She replied "Yeah, the poet was having a hard time". Erm.. Of course the poet had a hard time!!! It really wouldn't have taken a genius to work out that a performance poet wasn't going to go down massively well in front of an audience of Blockhead fans. I have no idea where the thinking behind these kind of events comes from. If only local councils would make the effort to bring in somebody with some expertise in the field (ie; some musicians?!), then maybe such terrible programming could be avoided and the shows that they've obviously spent a lot of money on would actually draw more of a crowd. If anyone from the festival is reading this (which I doubt very much), then get in touch and I'll come help you out next year. Very reasonable rates! And I'll save you a fortune...

It was great to see the legendary Norman Watt-Roy in action, and indeed meet him and have a little chat. Lovely bloke. When I saw the Blockheads at the Wychwood Festival earlier this year, somebody else was playing bass with the band (Mark Snowling?). Norman is a proper bass legend, and it was a real joy to see him live. We also had a great chat in the green room with guitarist John Turnbull, who was showing Clare some tricks on her new ukelele which, according to him, is a good one. Look out for some ukelele action hitting the Clare Teal live show in the near future!

Well, the Teal Tour continues on apace. We'll be playing the Dorking Halls this Saturday, before embarking on another northern run next week. We play the Plowright Theatre in Scunthorpe on Wednesday 29th, Leeds College of Music on the 30th, then the Gala Theatre in Durham on the 31st. Clare's latest album 'Get Happy' is due for release in the rest of Europe early in the new year, so we should be out touring on the continent soon. Literally can't wait!

On another note, for those of you who've been to the shows recently and enjoyed Mike's Cookery Corner (!), go and check out his blog at Jazz Chefs, where he and various other jazz musicians have been posting their recipes. It's really quite impressive. I did try to add it to my Blogroll, but there's something iffy going on with the feed, so you'll just have to go check it out for yourselves.

See y'all soon

Simon x

Down and Out in Paris and Denmark (Part II)

Hello folks. Thanks to all of you that left comments and messages on Part I, it's always good to know that you're enjoying my tales of rock & roll calamity. And also thanks to all those of you who have subscribed via Feedburner over the last week or so. It's great to see so many people getting involved in the blog. I had 25 new subscribers today alone (this is a record for me, I usually average around 15), which is very encouraging.

Thought it was about time to compose Part II. My memory is notoriously crappy in these situations and if I don't get it down soon, I will have forgotten all the details. As it is, the Danish extravaganza was quite literally a whistle-stop tour and I'm finding it rather tricky to work out what happened where... I think it's about time I started blogging whilst on the road. Expect something of a running commentary on the Duke Special Irish tour in November...

I finally arrived in Denmark late morning after the aforementioned Journey From Hell (including 1 taxi, 1 bus, 2 planes and the joyous overnight stay in the bus shelter). I was expecting to be met by Chrys and the band with our splitter van at Billund airport. As there was no sign of the van I gave him a call to discover that our van hadn't even made it past Willesden Green. Chrys had spent a lot of time making the van more comfortable and had installed a little flatscreen TV for some on the road movie action (Pimp My Van style), but sadly the van decided it would break down before even leaving London. It turned out they had to hire a new van at Brent Cross, and Mark and Steve had to hire a car when they arrived at Billund earlier in the morning. I was met by our Danish promoter Bent who drove me the extra 90 minutes to Holsterbro. 

We were playing at the Kielgatan in Holsterbro. This is a great little venue and they looked after us really well. Which was lucky; I'd already been up for two days by this point. The stage was a bit of a squeeze, so we had to set up the wrong way around, ie; bass and keyboards stage left instead of stage right. For some reason this buggered me up no end on the gig. I seem to stand stage right in pretty much every band I play with. It's incredibly strange to me how such a simple thing as where one stands on stage can totally throw you during the performance. I'm making too much of this really, to be honest it just threw out all my rock and roll moves which didn't really work pointing the wrong way! The gig was really busy; it was a seated audience but plenty of people were standing so there was a good atmosphere.

We moved on to Sonderborg on Thursday. We were staying at the same great little hotel we were in last time. Don't ask me it's name, I have no idea. But it's by the sea and has a windmill attached to it. We were playing at the Sonderborghus again, which is an artsy theatre-type gig in the centre of town. I do have a tendency to remember gigs on the quality of the food (shallow? yes) and this one was not a disappointment! A great little bit of buffet action was a welcome change from the deluge of cheese and speckled ham I'd been subjected to thus far that week. 

I'd had more than my fair share of technical issues during this trip, with virtually every one of my leads crapping out on me at some point and my pedal board performing it's obligatory "I don't like European voltages" hums and buzzes all through the week. My setup comprised almost entirely borrowed and stolen leads by the end of the run.

The show went down a storm, so much so that we were forced to bung in a second encore of Family Man at the last minute. Much to the surprise of our keyboard player Gordon, who had never played it before! Luckily, it only has a few chords...

After the show we found ourselves back at the hotel in that classic post-gig scenario we always seem to face in Denmark; the bar was shut. I really cannot fathom why hotel bars in Denmark insist on closing at around 11pm. We seem to end every night during the tour sat in some lobby or passageway nursing whatever spoils we had managed to liberate from the rider earlier on. It's hardly rock & roll now, is it?

Which brings me on to Gadstrup. We arrived in Gadstrup (which is apparently near Roskilde) the following afternoon to met with the least glamourous of our hotels thus far. To put it mildly, they looked like what can only be described as a poorman's Butlins chalets, directly facing the noisy railway line in a small town in the middle of nowhere. In fact, I found myself compelled to take a little photo to show you....

Oh, the glamour! Horrible, stinking, spider-infested shithole. The complete polar opposite of the previous night's accommodation. O well, we thought. Onwards and upwards. Anyone who tells you that touring is all glitz and glamour is frankly talking shit. You can show them this picture if you like...

I got instantly bored after we checked in and went for a stroll around 'town' in search of a decent coffee. Fat chance my friend. It was one of the most bizarre towns I've ever been to. The centre essentially consisted of one main high street which had a small supermarket, one cafe/restaurant, two charity shops and five (yes, five) hairdressers. Why a town that small requires five hair cutting establishments is beyond me. Christ knows what these people spend their time doing during the long Winter months, but you can be sure none of them will be in need of a haircut.

We played a show at the Ramso Musichus up the road. This was one of those venues, apparently quite common in Denmark, which are run by a committee who get together and hire a band once a month to play in their own venue. I really like this idea, it's something I have yet to come across in this country. Basically, they all club together and decide who they'd like to see, then approach the artists themselves. Because they owned the venue, they took great pride in the upkeep and had hired in a great sound system. 

It's always a little odd playing these small folky clubs with Maggie. We are not the quietest of bands and it's always a bit tricky playing the full-on show in such confined spaces. The room was laid out with a series of long tables set out for dinner, like some kind of masonic luncheon. I jokingly said to Maggie just before we went on that they were having a raffle in the break, and maybe a quick round of bingo. Unfortunately, Maggie didn't quite realise I was joking and wished the audience good luck in the raffle just as we left the stage at the end of the set. Oops. The show was small but fun. Both the audience and the band had a great time and were very appreciative.

The biggest show of this little run was at Train in Aarhus ("In the middle of our street"). Train is a fairly large venue, which is very popular on the Danish music scene. It's one of the places everyone plays at and it was good to finally play somewhere with a decent capacity after all the smaller shows we've been playing of late. You can tell almost instantly when you walk into a venue what sort of place it is. Train even smelt like a proper rock and roll venue (ie; it smelt like stale beer and sweat, but in a good way!). Nice big stage, fat PA and good lights. We knew as soon as we arrived that this was going to be the best show. It was.

We played the full-on set this time (we tend to tone it down quite considerably for the smaller venues) and loved every minute of it. Maggie's show works best when we can stretch out with the dynamics. Which kind of requires a bigger venue. Train was definitely the highlight of the Danish run and I'm looking forward to playing there again soon. It turned out that after the show, Train turns into the clubbing venue in Aarhus with literally hundreds of people queuing around the block to get in. We made our escape back to the hotel (bar shut) and watched the carnage unfold outside.

These were the last shows this year with Maggie. Hopefully we'll be back on tour soon in the new year with a new album, so watch this space.

Since I've been back I've been busy rehearsing with Jonathan Jeremiah and Duke Special. I'll be touring Ireland with Duke Special in November promoting his excellent new album I Never Thought This Day Would Come, which will be released in Ireland on October 17th. The dates are all up on my MySpace page. 

As soon as I get a chance I'm going to go into solo bass overdrive as I've just got my hands on a new bass. It's a Warwick Thumb NT VI (my first sixer) and will from now on be known simply as 'The Beast', because quite frankly, it's a monster. I've just got it back from Martin Petersen at The Gallery who has worked his magic and given it the perfect setup. Let me tell you folks, it's been a challenge putting it down long enough to write this blog post. Make sure you subscribe to my Solo Bass Podcast to keep up with the veritable deluge of new tracks that will inevitably come through in the near future!

On another note, I downloaded the new Lawson/Dodds/Wood album Numbers a couple of days ago and it's the best thing I've heard in ages. Go forth and purchase people. If you order it now, you get the download version with a bunch of excellent bonus tracks, and then when the CD is released in November, you'll receive that in the post too. Such a great idea. You can order the CD from Steve Lawson's online store here.