Oh Boy!

A Ha! Quantum Leap is on the telly!   I used to be so into that show when I was younger, the episode that is on just now is the one where Sam leaps into the body of a chimpanzee that is going into space as a test pilot for the space programme.  Gallus stuff indeed but for some reason I’m just not that bothered by it now, in fact I’m typing this instead of being engrossed in it as I once was.  I remember writing to the BBC to get them to send me a VHS of this very episode as I had missed it while I was on holiday in Salou or somewhere equally delightful with my family.  The swine’s at the BBC weren’t very forthcoming and these were the days before DVD box sets, 10,000 channels and the internet so I had to wait a grueling 2 years for it to be officially re-run on BBC 2.

Why is that?  Have I grown out of it?  It’s a show for adults, not a kid’s show designed to keep me vegetated in my seat.  I guess your tastes just change.  I remember not liking chips, gin, yoghurt and Will Smith but now I love them all!

I suppose it’s the same with everything…people included.  That’s the worst part.   

I’ve noticed it a lot recently with everyone’s favourite whipping boy, Facebook.  You’ll get a friend request from someone that you haven’t seen for years. Someone you used to spend all your time, money, thoughts and secrets with.  Now you struggle to muster and answer to “what have you been up tae?” – Fucking hunners by the way!  But I cant bring myself to recap the last 5 years and settle for a “Just working you know?”

I guess I’m slightly depressed by all this. The only thing I don’t really get like that with is Music (cider and chicken curry).  The first album I remember loving was ‘Bad Attitude’ by Meat Loaf and if that was on right now I would be standing up on this couch revving my fake motorbike throttle with joy in my heart.  We seem to allow ourselves ‘guilty pleasures’ with music but not with people.  Thank God for that I say!  Imagine where you would be if you stuck in with the same people all the time simply because fate and geography brought you together.  Fair enough there probably will be some exceptions but certainly not where I come from.  Although the idea of searching for lager lovelies cans and setting fires up the hill with Craig MacFarlane does sound like it would still be fun!

How much change is good change?  Is music better than people? Did Dr. Sam Beckett ever make the leap home?

A Jedi knows not these things. 

Thank fuck.

Sorry Ladies

The nearest and dearest among you will already be aware but I figured with the nature of the world nowadays, online and otherwise that announcing my ‘fate’ via the Internet would be the easiest option.

My girlfriend Holly Thompson and I have eventually decided to tie the knot.   We will be getting married in Glasgow on the 9^th of January at the Hotel Du Vin.  The ceremony itself will be a real small one with family and friends then we will have a much larger party in the evening where everyone can lose their minds accordingly.

This might seem like fairly wild patter, especially coming from me but the more I thought about the idea of the more it felt like the right thing to do.  Maybe I am getting soft in my old age?  We have lived together for a couple of years now and are still as in love as we always have been.  I’ve never been really into the idea of marriage as most of you may know but I guess your priorities change when you realize you’re with the right person.

Holly was all booked and ready to go start a new life in New Zealand when I met her a few years back and she decided to take the gamble on sticking around here with me so we could leave together. So, in turn I’m taking the gamble on spending my life with her. 

We will be selling up and leaving Scotland for good on the 16^th of January to travel the world with an eye on seeing where we would like to eventually settle so figured getting married while we were here would not only make us really happy but would also make sense as our friends and family could all be there and we could leave Scotland in a much safer and secure situation.

I’ve never really had a lot of family so it makes me pretty happy to be gaining a whole new one with Holly’s; they have always been there for us so I couldn’t be prouder.

The day itself will be amazing and the perfect end to our time in Glasgow with all the amazing people we have met over the years.  I hope you share our happiness at this and hope that you will be able to join us on the day.

The invites will be out at the end of November, make sure you’re in town and have yer glad rags at the ready.

Cheers

Crag

Love heart

I have a serious soft spot for the bevvy likes.

Paul Nicholls RIP

So, she wis like ‘whit?’, an he wis like ‘whit?’ and ah wis like ‘Wur yi aye?’

Your cover star this month is a true action hero, Thee Mr Mister Paul Nicholls who sadly passed away on the 29^th of August in the Marie Curie hospice in Glasgow. 

Paul was an exceptional character that really did bring a lot of laughter, colour, style and music to the world.  On New Year’s Eve last year he was tragically and suddenly diagnosed with Bowel Cancer and given a few months to live.  In those few months he accepted his fate and chose to get on with it as best he could. 

Those few months passed and as expected, we couldn’t get rid of him that easily!  He continued to live his life to the full, DJ at clubs, was always the life of the party and believe it or not...even got himself a new boyfriend! 

Paul was a DJ, a style icon and a Party Monster.  When people would look at Paul they would expect some raving maniac, although they were right, they were always almost instantly proven wrong by how pleasant, welcoming and genuine he was. 

Everyone in Paul’s life, in Glasgow and London has a story to tell about him...usually one of his one-liners or a mental situation at some party or club.

My first experience of Paul was at the tail end of a party in my flat when no-one but us wanted to leave or deal with the bright 7am sun creeping around the side of the curtains.  I asked him where we should go and he said “I’ll be outside the school gates wi ma fanny lips over ma heed pure hopin’ that the weans love Sugar Puffs!  Where are you goin’?”  From then on his banter just got more absurd and more hilarious. 

For the next 6 years I worked with Paul on various club projects around Glasgow and found him to be the perfect DJ and club host.  He would always play for crazy long times as he was too selfish to share the decks with anyone else and too vibrant and energetic to be upstaged by anybody.  He always got the party going and attracted the most beautiful and colourful crowds every night without fail.  To this date he is the only DJ that hasn’t had the sack from Bloc, despite him ruining the venue every time by inciting riots on top of the tables and literally bringing the roof down!

It really is a tricky one, losing someone like Paul.  Realising that you will never see them again puts an air of unusual anxiety and emotion over everything for a while, then slowly you learn to live with the memories instead...and the memories can never change.

Paul left a lot of memories for a lot of people but one of his most important and hopefully most enduring legacies was his ‘Music is Disease’ blog that he updated almost daily chronicling his experiences since being diagnosed with cancer.  He tried his best to let everyone know exactly what he was going through. This not only helped his friends and family deal with what was happening but also thousands of other sufferers of illness and tragedy.  Keeping a diary seems like such a simple thing, but could you imagine having to do it when going through intense chemotherapy and dealing with the knowledge that you are dying.  To have the strength to keep that up really is truly inspirational and this gave solace and hope to so many people all over the world.

You hear about people dying all the time and to be honest it feels like we’re almost desensitised to death nowadays.  It’s only when someone with such a lust for life passes away that it all gets brought home with a bang.  Paul said in his blog that he wanted to “put the fun into funeral.  A FUN-ERAL!  I know people may think it's daft but I want to be celebrated, not mourned.  I lived life to the full and want to go out with a bang.”

I’m certain that when Paul got to wherever he is now there was much more than a bang and it will surely be pure bangin’ for a long time to come!

Death is something no one can ever know about and it probably is something different for everyone.  I like to take comfort in the unknown so don’t subscribe to any of the religions that suggest angels, fire, sexy virgins and the like.  We dictate our own lives so why not dictate our own afterlives?  When you think about someone like Paul you can only imagine the kind of afterlife he could create for himself.  What a rammy it must be, the angels won’t stand a chance of keeping up and nae chance are they getting a shot on the decks!

Goodbye Paul, you really were something special.  You will be missed.x

“Let the music flow into your body and lift your soul for it's the medicine of life.”

Paul Nicholls, April 14, 2010 – http://musicisdisease.blogspot.com

Bloc+ August 2010

Hiya pals.

Is it just me?  Or does anyone else find it hard to get the time to actually listen to music nowadays? 

You might think that as someone who listens to music and books bands for a living that I would have all the time in the world to digest albums en masse.

To be honest though, I find it kinda tough to get the time with all the distractions that are out there now.

There has been a lot of chat of late about the demise of myspace and I definitely have to agree.  I have used myspace for years as a tool to get basically all the info on a band in one go.  From a booking perspective it was a godsend.  You could hear their music, see how often they were playing, see if they had any kind of following and most importantly...see if they were good looking or not!  Myspace today still offers you all that but no one seems to be giving it the dedicated time they used to.  I assume this is simply because there are so many other sites out there doing something similar and myspace is seen as the industry standard.  All the young un’s will be adopting the new cool sites so the older statesmen will stay stalwart and true to what they do so they don’t feel like Hadouken!  It’s probably very similar to what happened when punk came around, or rock & roll, Compact Discs, UK Speed Garage or clothes with writing on them!

I wouldn’t call myself a technophobe but I do find it really hard to keep up with it all now.  You have Myspace, Facebook, Soundcloud, Spotify, Band Camp, Twitter and probably more that I haven’t even heard of.  Then you have the bloggers, the podcasts, the newspaper supplements, radio shows and magazines on top of all that.  When you look at it like that you see how much there really is out there and the most surprising thing is that all of these resources are being used all the time.  With mobile phones being what they are now it’s (apparently) easy to manage all these things at once but I don’t really agree.  How do you get the time to go to gigs, sit back and listen to an album over and over again while still holding down a full time job and how can you keep a partner for that matter?  To put on a basic gig now you don’t just book a venue, email the bands,  get some posters around town and play the show.  Now you need a graphic designer and a computer science degree to publicise your gigs and no one comes unless there are 100 ‘confirmed guests’ on the online page.

But...is this a good thing?  Now we know everything about the band, who’s going to the show, we have a free downloaded single and can find out what people think of the show in an instant.  That’s pretty cool I suppose but ‘In the front row at the gig, soooo amazing!’ – If you’re enjoying it soooo much then why are you tweeting instead of enjoying it?  Everyone is saying that the music industry has been in steep decline in the last 5 years for all manner of reasons.  Think back to before all of this, the industry was healthy, the bands and labels had money and the rock & roll dream was alive.  Is too much info, distraction, availability and consumption destroying the seed that makes it all exist in the first place?

I can see us all just ending up talking online rather than meeting in person.  All you hear when you’re in a bar is ‘Did you see what I put up on Facebook?’ or the cardinal sin in my eyes, referring to people by their ‘online’ name.  Gads.

That’s where the other side of the coin comes in.  People have their own pride too, so they don’t want to spend their time online, they don’t want to be seen like 15 year old girls tapping away on their phones updating their status every 2 minutes with pointless drivel.  Are they right to do that?  Or are they missing out on a lot?  It took me ages to get a Facebook account and to be honest before that I felt pretty out of the loop as half the patter people were having was generated from something on Facebook.  Now I’m hardly off the bloody thing and feel like a dick.  Did you see what I put up on Facebook the other day? ;-)

Am I just being an old fart?  Should I just turn 30 and start shopping at Aspecto and leave the kids to it?

As usual, no definite answers – just food for thought.

Cheers

Crag

Bloc+ July 2010

July Flyer Text

Right.  It’s always good to start with a healthy ‘Right’ by the way.

Last month I got far too much stick for being too nice on the monthly flyer.  So, this month yer aw a bunch of dicks.  Right?

I’ll try and be more topical this month as it’s festival season, I don’t have any bands to book and tell you how good they are so I may as well just revert to my more comfortable ranty, moany demeanour.

First to get it in the neck are the drinks companies and promotions companies.  Being in the pub game for a few years now you come to realise some things about how the operation works and how much money is wasted on useless ideas.

I’m sure you have all been to a launch night for a drink or a bar opening sponsored by a brand in your time.  What did you take away from this? (apart from a worthless lanyard or an ill fitting XL T-shirt)  Everyone’s out for a freebie to be honest, no one is really caring about brand impact and cultural cross genre fertilisation, that’s why these launch nights don’t work.  It’s simply a waste of money and resources that could be much better spent on something that will benefit the bar and its clientele.  What we want most as bars is some free stock or a reduced price so we can make our prices lower for our customers – not bloody murals of Japanese cyber Goths or fatties with sirens.

Then you get the practically useless going out guides and award ceremonies that are so out of touch its unreal.  I don’t know what Scotland is gonna do when Sharleen Spiteri, Lorraine Kelly and Michelle Mone decide they can’t be bothered with it all anymore.  Bars that have been open for only a few months win awards in all manner of categories because the category is sponsored by a brewery that has a vested interest in the bar or they have taken out substantial advertising with them.

In 2008 ‘Music Pub of the Year’ was between 2 venues who shall remain nameless.  My research shows me that both these venues only opened in July and November of 2007!  Surely to be Music Pub of the Year you have to have been operating for at least a year, paid your dues and at least affected the musical landscape in some way.  This is no reflection on the venues at all and no offence is intended but it simply highlights how much of a sham and a waste of money it all is.  I couldn’t even find out online who won the award in 2009!  How prestigious can it be if Google doesn’t even know eh?  This isn’t a jealousy issue, it’s more frustrating – look at places like the 13^th Note or Sleazy’s that have been a hub for the cities musical culture for way more years than us that don’t get the recognition they deserve.

I’m not trying to be militant or anti-establishment about all this, quite the opposite in fact.  What I would like to see would be everyone working together for the same goal.  At the end of the day everyone needs to make money to survive.  What is overlooked is that without the pubs, the drinks companies would have no outlet for their product and without the drinks companies the pubs would have nothing to sell.

In the case of Bloc+, we provide live music for free so that we don’t have to force bands to sell tickets and the music can be heard by anyone.  We can survive this hit because the bands can play for less money as it’s free and people will spend at the bar easier as they haven’t bought a ticket. 

In the end it seems that we are taking the hit to sell more of the drinks companies’ products.  So, the Bands and the drinks companies are happy but we’re still left with the outlay to pay for the bands and equipment.  If a drinks company really wants to offer support I’d love to see them spend their money on Mic Stands, Leads, Band Fees, Sound Equipment and Listings Posters rather than giving us table cards for a cocktail no-one wants or a million scratch cards for shitey competitions and bits of branded tat that will end up in the bin.  I don’t mind having their logo front of house on a stand or speaker as it’s them who have paid for it and it means that we can bring you more great music and offer the bands a bit more support and a better experience for the audience.

I don’t consider it selling out; I consider it a means to bring ideas to life that Bloc+ as a small independent business simply cannot afford to do.

This month I would like a wee bit of participation from you.  If you are reading this then you are probably in Bloc+ regularly and know what we are all about.  If you could email your thoughts on what you would like to see happen in here.  Would you really mind having a sponsors logo all over the gigs if it meant we could bring you better stuff?  If you could have a dream line up (realistically! Not Pantera with Rod Stewart supporting!) in Bloc+, what would it be?  Or, just your general comments and feeling about the place and what we do here.

If you could email me on crag@bloc.ru with your thoughts then hopefully we can work together to make this place what you and I want it to be.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, told you I’d be back to the rant this month!

Crag

Bloc+ June 2010

All the young dudes, carry the news.

Usually I write this wee blog with abject misery most months and it does suffice as a decent moany soapbox, but this month I’ve had a wee fire set under me.  Well, to be honest it’s been lit since the start of the year. 

If you ask me, inspiration is hard to come by when you are in a job for a long time.  You get to the point where you are just running through the motions and you watch everyone around you succeeding and failing, friends come and go and everything changes completely on an almost annual, if not sometimes faster cycle.  This is precisely the reason that when people come along doing things in the right spirit you get all worked up inside.

As you will know from years of coming to Bloc, we don’t really work with anyone else.  This year I’ve started opening up to a lot more avenues and I’d like to take this chance to say a wee thank you to them and to let you lot know how good they all are. 

Firstly, the staff at Bloc+ who make the place what it is.  Everyone from thegorgeous bar staff and management who keep you from thirst with a smile and slap from time to time, Danny and the kitchen staff who make great food as if by magic considering the lack of kitchen facilities, Rory Corr who wastes his time looking at pictures of Van Damme every month to compile this flyer, Chris Cusack for his ‘intense’ sound engineering and dedication to the cause of new music you would never hear otherwise and to Ms Alana Stewart for helping me out with posters, listings, PR and whatever else I can throw at her.  And last of all, the bands who play at this wee dive and make it so special, without them we simply would not exist.  Thankyou.

This year you will have also noticed that we have been working with a very professional, courteous and enthusiastic bunch of individuals.  No, not the licensing standards officers, but... Detour Scotland.  You should know all about our exploits together over the last 8 months that have seen gigs that encompass the spirit of what we exist for and take you on a journey of new experience every month.  I wish them all the best of luck in their future ventures, through working with them I’ve seen what they have in them.  Hopefully they’ll give Scotland something unique to be proud of in the coming years.

On May 30^th we did our first outing of ‘A Wee Jaunt’.  The idea of the event was much like this blog, a chance to say thank you to all the amazing people who make these wonderful ideas come to life.  Bloc+Music and Detour Scotland took around 50 people on a wee jaunt around Glasgow that included our crew members from previous gigs and shoots, our favourite radio and online broadcasters and pretty much everyone from the Scottish press.  The point was to showcase our favourite unsigned bands in the most unique way we could think of and to further draw everyone’s attention to the future of the Scottish scene...the ones making it happen today in music and media.  The day out took in 6 venues around the city, around 30 performers and turned it all on its head with performances in back alleys, toilets, subways, gardens and even one in Tenerife! 

The main premise of this day for me was to illustrate what you can do with no money and a good intention.  I get constantly sick of seeing promotions companies wasting thousands of pounds on events that don’t need 15 staff members, flights from London, Logistics managers, PR teams and the like.  If more people realised that the future of the industry are graduating from Uni now and would gladly take the work experience then a lot more money would be available to do a lot more things that would inspire and ultimately make Glasgow better.

At the moment in this town you could present the hordes with Pythagoras himself unplugged, performing  the music of the spheres and no one would come unless someone on their courses band were playing their first gig too.  That always really gets to me because I know they would love the gigs that are on every night in Glasgow under the radar and would certainly learn something.

 Maybe it’s not the punters that need to sort themselves out though, maybe it’s the venues and the bands who need to offer them something new.  Are there any new ideas though?  We all have to work within the confines of our surroundings, equipment and abilities and if everyone was trying to do something new would there really be room?  Would we raise the bar of expectation too high so that only the rich could afford to ability to entertain the masses?

The best idea I can come up with is opening your eyes and ears to what people are almost throwing at you every night!  Bands are putting their music out for free all the time and venues are putting better and better line ups all the time. Stalwarts of this ethic (to name just a couple) are the likes of Predestination Records (.com) who have just released a download only compilation album featuring 23 bands for only £3, Glasgow Podcart  (.com)who provide an hours worth of new music, art and opinion weekly.  Can you really argue with that?

So to all of you conscientious consumers... come on, listen up, open your eyes and ears to what’s right on your doorstep.

And to all the young dudes, keep up the good work.

Crag