Schlepping through the snow

When I can finally prize myself away from my 2013 Playlist through my headphones I'll get on the road and jaunt across to Sheffield. Quite quickly this year I've amassed a collection of songs in this playlist that are truly awesome. From older numbers like Heavy Cross by the Gossip, Grimes' new material, Rosabella Gregory who I'd heard on Bob Harris recently, lots of reccomendations off Guy Garvey's 6Music show and much more. It's been a strong start to the year in terms of musical discovery.

The question that remains is what to put on in the car... Unfortunately due to the closure of the Snake/Woodhead Pass heading to Sheffield I'm going to have to take the motorway, which will require my phone to act as a sat nav, drastically hindering Spotify's capabilities. Therefore I need to find something CD based... I did get hold of a REALLY old copy of Grace Jones - Island Life a few days ago, and some classic Faith No More. Might give those a blast, but I'm dying to give the Tame Impala album a listen to, seeing as everybody seems to be raving about them at the minute.

Either way, time to schlep through the snow, see you on the other side!

Physical

Sat in bed preparing for another busy week, the forthcoming seven days are a daunting prospect. All of a sudden, after a lull in some of my responsibilities at work, briefs have come flying in and I find myself about to embark on a very busy week! I am envisaging all sorts of problems, but to take heed of my uncle's ethos - "no problems, only solutions", so these are only to be overcome, not to be lingered on.

It's another busy week of awards prepping, putting the button on two entries I have an amazing confidence in! More demos and some editing on a documentary I am working on to enter into the Charles Parker Prize. I am quite keen to have a go at editing that on Pro Tools rather than my native Audition...

These presenter demos I am working on are coming along well - it was quite a nostalgic, emotional link I crafted with regards to HMV...the memories of that place are unreal (assuming it does go...) - the landmark in town where we all met on a Saturday, where you'd kill hours of the day waiting for a lift home, either in the indie aisle or over at the posters ogling at 'artwork' you didn't understand...likewise, there was the beauty of physical music, a tangible CD! I'm currently listening back to Guy Garvey on 6Music, he's just suggested we ought to be making our loved ones and friends more CDs - a great story of a couple who CD swap each month or something along those lines! I'm a fan of this idea, even though without knowing it, the exchange of music is constantly happening with Spotify sharing! Nothing quite like physical music though eh!?

Brit Award Predictions...

Seem to do this annually, predicting who will win what award... May as well continue the trend! With the Brits just round the corner, here's who I think I'll pick up some gongs..



Mastercard British Album Of The Year
Emeli Sande – 'Our Version Of Events'
Mumford & Sons – 'Babel'
ALT-J - "AN AWESOME WAVE" - Definitely Alt-J...everybody seems to have gone crazy for this CD, and it'll be a refreshingly worthy winner!
Plan B – 'iLL Manors'
Paloma Faith – 'Fall To Grace'


Best British Single with Capital FM
ADELE - 'SKYFALL' - yep, suppose it could have been any one of these, they're all about the same calibre of song but ADELE probably gets the nod above the rest!...meaning I'll probably end up giving Producer Paul Epworth the nod too!
Alex Clare - 'Too Close'
Coldplay & Rihanna - 'Princess of China'
DJ Fresh feat. Rita Ora - 'Hot Right Now'
Emeli Sandé - 'Next To Me'
Florence & The Machine - 'Spectrum'
James Arthur - 'Impossible'
Jessie J - 'Domino'
Labrinth Feat. Emeli Sandé – 'Beneath Your Beautiful'
Olly Murs feat. Flo Rida 'Troublemaker'
Rita Ora feat. Tinie Tempah - 'R.I.P.'
Rizzle Kicks - 'Mama Do The Hump'
Robbie Williams - 'Candy'
Rudimental Feat. John Newman - 'Feel The Love'
Stooshe - 'Black Heart'


Best Live Act
COLDPLAY - having seen these guys live, I'm not sure any of the others can compare! Do you get flashy wristbands at The Vaccines?... Mumford would be a good gig, can always dance to their stuff!.. But I'd probably head for the bar if any tracks off Babel come on!...jesting, obv.
Muse
The Rolling Stones
The Vaccines
Mumford & Sons


British Male Solo Artist
Calvin Harris
Olly Murs
BEN HOWARD - maybe I'm biased, having seen him live and his music really striking a chord with me on many levels this year, but for such a lyric-driven folk musician to hit the mainstream with such force this past year must give him some chance of a gong here!
Richard Hawley
Plan B


British Female Solo Artist
Bat For Lashes
Amy Winehouse
EMELI SANDE - however much I've heard her stuff played so much!...she can turn a brilliant lyric, and she's been known to write one or two catchy melodies as well..
Paloma Faith
Jessie Ware


British Group
One Direction
ALT-J - probably these chaps again. Why not, go for it fellas!
Muse
Mumford & Sons


British Breakthrough
Jessie Ware
Jake Bugg
RITA ORA - had this situation last year, where any one of the nominees in this category could easily have won. In this case I'm going to elect to pick someone other than Ben or Alt-J and go with the mainstream breakthrough success in Rita Ora.
Ben Howard
Alt-J


International Group
Alabama Shakes
FUN. - can't believe these guys churned out so many catchy hits all the way through the year!
The Script
The Killers
The Black Keys


International Male Solo Artist
Bruce Springsteen
Michael Buble
Frank Ocean
Gotye
JACK WHITE - apart from Gotye writing one decent song, and Frank Ocean writing a whole album of dark but sick alternative hip-hop, I don't know what Buble or Springsteen did last year!? Will Frank's work be rewarded?..or more likely Jack White should claim the award for a truly amazing Blunderbuss album and some devilishly good live performances in the summer.


International Female Solo Artist
TAYLOR SWIFT - didn't require much thought...even with Rihanna nominated as well...but Taylor seems to have hit incredible form this year.
Rihanna
Alicia Keys
Cat Power
Lana Del Rey

BRITs Global Success
To Be announced at BRIT Awards 2013

British Producer Of The Year
Damon Albarn
Jake Gosling
PAUL EPWORTH - yep, go claim it for having masterminded Skyfall.

Critics Choice
Tom Odell

Special Recognition Award
War Child


Lets see how I get along!....

Awards season!!

I love awards season! This is the time of the year where we all get to look back over the hard work of 2012 and marvel at what we achieved. The prospect of packaging up that hard graft into something that might even get rewarded is even more exciting!

If anything, the awards themselves are the bonus...Instead the real excitement is the chance to look back and celebrate projects where we've devoted so much time and effort, and then build on that retrospective and use it as a springboard for even better endeavours this year!

I am really keen to submit my Fairport Festival documentary for an award. This project taught me so much, built wonderful bridges with some great people, and proved to bequeath a result I was delighted with.

I knew I wanted to produced a doco about Fairport, and I was eager for my best mate and filmmaker Connor Hawkins to direct a short-film to complement what I would produce for the radio. Summarising a whole project is near on impossible...but I'll give you a flavour of our task and let you in on the best bits...
Fairport's Cropredy Convention is a folk-rock festival for 20,000 just outside a small village Oxfordshire, named Cropredy. It is also dubbed the Friendliest Festival Of Them All!..which I would suggest is a good shout, having been there every year with my folks since I was a lil' baba. The documentary I wanted to do constructed itself around the 45th anniversary of Fairport Convention that year, and thus the festival would have an extra special sentiment (with lots of TV docs also in production to celebrate this too!). Combining a look back over the band's illustrious and long history, I wanted to also capture the magic of Cropredy: the people who visit, the fringe festival, even those who come to Cropredy to enjoy the weekend without tickets to the main festival!...this human level of the programme, exploring what the punters take away from Fairport each year, was exactly the kind of anti-corporate job I wanted, opposed to a straight, hard-and-fast look back at a band history.

Initially, I hinged a lot of my pre-prep on interviews that were unlikely to happen! Even in the run-up to the festival I am sure I was a little nervous about filling 52mins of programming time on the local radio station Banbury Sound. When I got some interviews recorded prior to the Festival with key members of the Fairport repertoire I began to feel happier, but nothing could have ignited the project's incendiary like the weekend itself.

Arriving on site on Thursday morning, having spent Wednesday over in Cropredy soaking up the pre-festival vibes at the pubs, we established ourselves in the press area before quickly retreating to our humble Field 2, where our wolfpack of mates have situated ourselves and our quaint camp for years now. It's always been a mission for us to gain access, as it's technically the car parking field and we'd always been backpackers. We always succeeded in blagging our way through, but this year with a car was a piece of cake.

We had until 4pm, when the festival began, to gather some content, so off Connor and I went in our separate directions to hunt for audio and video. We agreed we'd do this the following day too, and I was prepared to sacrifice a few band viewings to capture everything I wanted. After having spoken to the lovely press officers on Thursday morning, I had been amazed to learn that I had been granted interview time with all the members of the Fairport band, and most incredibly, rare facetime with both Dave Swarbrick and Dave Mattacks! Swarb is one of the most accomplished, celebrated folk fiddle players of all time, and DM was with Fairport from near-on the beginning. Their contributions, I hoped, would bolster the credibility of this programme dramatically!

With some great voxes and wild track in the can, I made for the festival field to records some ad libbed 'diary entries': I had decided to keep audio diaries throughout the festival, to then edit together to create a parallel storyline of my festival unravelling. Whether it would work or not, I did not know, but I endeavoured to try it nonetheless!...it was in my storyboard!

The usual antics took place for us fellas, enjoying our 'holiday' festival. A place with such familiarly we could navigate it blindfolded...although don't challenge us to! Rum and beer was drunk, laughs were shared, and we always made it to the bar in the evening to meet our families and more friends to soak up the last few bands of the night.
On the final night, Fairport Convention take to the stage to perform a marathon 3-hr set, this time complete with rare appearances from the aforementioned folk legends. Swarb played his fiddle with such finesse!...amazing to watch! Certainly one of the festival highlights, watching a man I had spoken to only hours before, a thoroughly insightful and switched-on chap. What a pleasure to talk to him. DM, well lets just say he won't take any prisoners. I was 19. I had researched him as thoroughly as possible in the time I had, yet he exposed my patchy knowledge of the early days of Fairport, back in the 60s. I certainly learnt a lot about researching somebody during that chat...but in the end I carried home a decent interview!

With the 3-hr set concluding with their signature farewell anthem 'Meet On The Ledge', we all sway with interlocked arms at the bar and treasured the moment, before retreating backstage to join in the singalong joviality with a different crowd.

When I got back to the edit room, I was amazed and delighted with just how much phenomenal content I now had to play with. Sure I had done some detailed story boarding, but the audio I now had demanded a revised narrative, and I bloody well edited it together whilst wearing a smile.

I knew Connor would have gathered some great footage too, he's a talented cameraman with a keen eye for a photo. We were blessed by the weather, so I was also excited to see his film and package up our endeavours ready to give to Banbury Sound.

I loved that project, who knows if it will receive any recognition at any industry awards...but I do know for certain that my mind races every day to come up with new ideas so I can enjoy that production process once more!