Interesting piece in the NYT recently by Frank Bruni. Belated grasp of things, but good that the talking heads are finally starting to notice what’s been going on under their talking noses for years. In a nutshell, the piece focuses…
Blog Archives
Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Part 7 – Sick Self Love
Tagged with: Aretha Franklin, Fame, Frank Bruni, honesty, John McCain, marketing, NYT
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Episode VI: That’s Lovely But…
Okay, I’m basically going to demonstrate by example here. I’ve noticed recently that a certain website has started billing my guest-with-house-trio residency as an “award-winning quartet”. It’s very flattering and no doubt rather good for business, but I do feel…
Jazz London Live
If you’re ever in London or thereabouts and feel like a bit of jazz, please check out JazzLondonLive for extensive listings, gig and venue co-ordinates and musician biogs. This site was launched last year to take on the baton from Mary Greig’s venerable…
Jazz in London Calling…
Sad to announce that Mary Greig, the indefatigable powerhouse behind the magazine Jazz in London, is having to step down after a mind-bending 43 years. Think about that for a moment. 43 years, month in month out, listing every jazz…
Tagged with: Jazz in London, Mary Greig, Parliamentary Award
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Everyone’s a Critic…
Jazz musicians will possibly know Nicolas Slonimsky for his Thesaurus of Scale Patterns. Famously, Coltrane practised out of it and I come across musicians today who still explore it. Just the other day, I was chatting to a saxophonist about…
Tagged with: critics, Lexicon of Musical Invective, Slonimsky
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, g) Classically Inclined, i) Reviews
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, g) Classically Inclined, i) Reviews
Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Episode V: Biohazard!
Dealing with reviewers can be a trying business. The late Douglas Adams surely knew this. In Hitch Hiker, the researcher despatched to Earth knows so little about the place that he chooses the name of a car “to blend in”. Then, having “painstakingly”…
Tagged with: Hitch Hikers Guide, marketing, music
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Part IV: Is That So?
File this one under personal attitude, because we’re not going to be diving knee-deep into tritone-infested waters here. More of a generalised New Year type reflection, really. We’re all prey from time to time to concerns about how we’re perceived by…
Tagged with: Hakuin Ekaku, marketing, music
Posted in c) Musicianship, d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Posted in c) Musicianship, d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing, Part the Third – Putting a Sock in It
It’s so tempting isn’t it? You’ve got this great band, you want the world to know about a gig you’ve done or a fantastic new album you’re releasing. So you think about creating a sock puppet (an online pseudonym) and…
Tagged with: jazz, marketing, music, sock puppets
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing 2.0
Don’t Mess With Mr Inbetween. For my cynical, sarcastic and often downright rude rundown of some of the cheap flimflam tricks musicians use to promote themselves, see here. Here though, are some further observations, and this time … it’s digital.…
Tagged with: jazz, marketing, middle man, music
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Posted in d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
!!!The Secret of Jazz!!!
The world of jazz education has been blown wide open and rendered irrelevant by this revolutionary new invention. Forget the courses, the books, the practising, paying dues. Introducing… Improxatin™ ContrixoLydalot-251! Here’s the science bit… Formulated in a secret Swiss laboratory…
Tagged with: April, secret of jazz
Posted in c) Musicianship, d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
Posted in c) Musicianship, d) The Dark Art of Marketing, e) Rants & Ramblings
...appetising young books for sale...
Pents book is recommended reading on Gary Burton's Berklee course.
Jason Lyon on Music 