Previews and excerpts from the forthcoming book

‘A Hero’s Journey Through the Music Industry’.

“At home, aim for harmony. While at work, aim for progress. Among friends, aim for trust and in the world, aim for sincerity.
But in the dojo, aim for truth.”
Awa Kenzo (1880 – 1939)

Here is a short excerpt from an introductory chapter that looks at some of the reasons for writing this book ‘A Hero’s Journey Through the Music Industry’.

Mission Impossible.

February 2006 and I’m in London standing before a room full of music industry people who have assembled to hear ‘How We Did It’. They have come to listen to our giant killing fairy tale of how the little guy took on the big guy – in this case, the biggest guy on the block, X-Factor – and triumphed. How, from a spare bedroom-office and a studio in a shed in our garden we beat Madonna, Westlife, The Pussy Cat Dolls, etc. etc. to the Christmas Number 1 spot in the UK and Irish charts. I am describing our journey from provincial indie label to Number One record and, ultimately, 1 million sales (sales, not streams). I’m sharing some of the experiences and the odd funny story. It all seems to be going quite well. I have done a few of these events now, and I’m starting to feel like a game show host.

Success attracts!

They want to know

• How we did it
• How can they learn from what we did
• How can they do it themselves

From Major to Minor

Strange now how it feels to be ‘the other side of the looking glass’ when, just a short time ago, I was sat out there where they are, asking the same kind of questions that they were now asking me, and for some strange reason …I now seem to know the answers, or some of them anyway.

The questions come thick and fast. It worries me how some of my answers now feel a bit rehearsed or automatic as I have given them so often recently, but I am always keen to preach from the Gospel of Indie (the holiest of pops texts) and they want to know the magic words to our particular kind of spell – Harry Potter eat your heart out! I repeat the Independent mantra, extolling the virtues of the DIY method over and over again…. when, slowly it begins to dawn on me…

…THEY DONT BELIEVE ME

They don’t believe me when I say we did it ourselves, with no Major player or Major record label in the background pulling the strings. I am staggered by this insight, by this light bulb moment. I realise my Indie ethics are being tolerated, humored even, just as long as I give them the inside line on how we got to be the number 1 record that Christmas. (Music Industry cynical? As if!). Its almost as if they think we are just keeping up the pretense that we are what we say we are – Independent and will stand or fall by what we believe in. There is only Dorothy, Toto and her trio of incomplete misfits but no omnipotent Wizard of Oz (or should that be Wizard of X?) behind the screen controlling it all.

Still in shock from this insight, I bite the bullet and ask for a show of hands; “How many people in the room believe we achieved this level of success ‘only’ by doing some kind of deal with a major record label?” What is it politicians say, never ask a question you don’t know the answer to? Well, I’m obviously no politician.

Stick ‘em Up Punk

Somewhere in the order of 90% of the hands in that room simultaneously reached for the ceiling – once more I am stunned!  (F*****g appalled actually). The non-politician in me wins again and I find myself asking yet another question I don’t know the answer to.

“Why would so many of you believe our success was down to having a major player behind us, especially after what I have told you about being Independent and taking the DIY route?”

A Liar or an Outlier

One man stood up and said something like this “…because today, its not possible to do what you claim you did without the help of a major record label…”

There follows one of those tumbleweed moments – once more I am stunned by their inability to accept we did what we did – on our own! In a strange way I guess I took some satisfaction from this as it actually elevates the level of our achievement despite the general consensus…in effect, what he was saying was that we had actually DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE!

Blind Love

In the music industry perception is everything, and it’s sticky. This perception (that our achievement was due in some part to the support or assistance of a major player in the industry) would prevail amongst seasoned industry professionals no matter how many times I tried to tell them to the contrary. There are none so blind…

For me, that was reason enough to pick up my pen and start telling our story because I feel it’s a story worth telling – and yes, it did happen this way.