This months blog is an excerpt from the intro section of the forthcoming book ‘A Hero’s Journey Through the Music Industry’. Stay safe people!

Diva

The legendary R’nB diva Mary J Blige is standing in front of me, beautiful and statue-like. She’s stood, stock-still wearing only a large brilliant-white dressing gown, a white towel wrapped-royally around her head accompanied by huge dark sunglasses atop a sphinx-like expression on her inscrutable and motionless face. She displaces air in the way that only a true diva can! But its obvious she doesn’t want to be standing in front of me right now, – or more accurately – she doesn’t want to be standing in front of anybody right now! But she has to.

To my right, the Kaiser Chiefs (the band, not the football team) are leaving the stage. Charlotte Church is to my left with her band and Richard Ashcroft is in the corner looking pale and interesting.

The hosts for the show, Rufus Hound and Fern Cotton, look like they just been dragged out of bed and had cups of coffee and scripts thrust into their hands – my guess is, they’ve just been dragged out of bed and had cups of coffee and scripts thrust into their hands – and pushed into a TV studio (elementary my dear Watson).

WTF Am I?

So what is this? Have I been abducted by pop-culture loving aliens and dropped onto Planet Pop? Not very likely. Is it some strange drug-induced flash-back (can aspirin do that?) Or am I a rabid self-fantasist enjoying a Walter Mitty-like daydream of self-importance and derring-do (as you Americans like to say, I’ll take the fifth on that last one!)

The truth is I am standing in the Top of the Pops (TOTP’s) studio at BBC Television Centre in London as the production team work through camera positions and lighting schedules and generally rehearse for the impending show. There is quite a bit of tension in the room as you might expect, not just the usual stuff, getting stars (some of them of the  ‘super’ variety) in and out for camera checks (thank you Miss Blige), handling the logistics of moving musicians, instruments and equipment in and out of the studio, and all the other paraphernalia required in producing a ‘live’ prime-time TV show – but today is a bit different!

I’m With the Band.

I am with my band, the band I manage. They are the duo Nizlopi. One of the dynamic twosome is double-bass playing, beat-boxer, John Parker, the other is my son, Luke Concannon (yes Luke, I am your father). Their debut single (on our own record label, FDM Records, run by me) has just gone to the Number 1 spot in the UK charts near the end of December 2005. Normally this show is ‘run as live’ which basically means the bands mime to their records instead of actually playing the song. Today is a little different. Part of the show will be ‘fully-live’. This is exceedingly rare for such a show!  And because of this, the tension is mounting. Even though in its heyday ToP’s was arguably the most important and influential TV music show in Europe the artists would always mime to their songs. Luke and John have politely told the production team that they “don’t mime”. The production team are not in the least bit phased (yet) and tell them, reassuringly,  “Don’t worry guys you’ll get the hang of it. Its really easy and we will have plenty of time for a number of rehearsals for you to nail it! It won’t be a problem! Relax, we’ve got this! 

You Talking To Me?

There is a pause (of the pregnant variety) then Luke and John reply, perhaps you didn’t understand us, we didn’t say “we can’t mime, we said we DON’T mime”. These words are spoken in a gentle but firm manner, these are not two prima-donnas making excessive and unrealistic demands, they are simply being true to their musical principles (more of which later). I vividly remember the palpable sense of dread that rolled collectively across the production teams faces at this revelation. For reasons I will address later, Luke and John have made a commitment to their music and their performance to ‘never mime’ and to only play live! So now the production team must be on their toes because a million things can go wrong with a live ‘prime-time’  TV broadcast of a musical performance. After all, this is the biggest show of the year and nothing can go wrong. Everyone in the studio seems to have their fingers very, very tightly crossed…everyone that is except for the band!

And what happened next is a whole other story…..