*The Early Beatles

There’s a fascination about the early Beatles Photos and Music. What gave them that ‘magic’ – was it how they bounced off each other – how much did George Harrison (the quiet one) add. In the early days all three were front men and Lennon wanted the best in the band. 

At sixteen Lennon started his skiffle band The Quarrymen in 1957. They changed their name to The Beatles and played over in Hamburg Germany in 1960. It wasn't until 1962 that the band picked up attention for their gigs at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. After Decca Records rejected the band in early February 1962 with the comment "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein", George Martin signed the group to EMI's Parlophone label in May.  

I’ve been having fun looking through early Beatles images.

At a time when mods and rockers walked the streets of London, and when British youth was fascinated by the American blues records sold in back street shops and when pop music really took off here. It was fresh and exciting times for pop art culture, Mary Quant fashion, Twiggy, mini skirts and young music. 

Then it was all about the song and the instruments before the advent of the music video. (and oddly the Beatles were the first ones to make music videos, as they were so long at the number one spot they simply couldn't be on Top of the Pops every week!) 

Recommmend Life Magazine 'George Harrison Remembered'. Here's a link you might enjoy.  http://thehamburgbeatles.blogspot.com/

Todays generation is the 'fast' generation they want everything yesterday. They want to be The Beatles 1966 right away... rather than the Beatles 1957.  It took the Beatles 5 years of graft to get anywhere....

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'enLIGHTen' Edinburgh City of Literature

enLIGHTen is an exciting new project by Edinburgh City of Literature –  that will fuse words and cutting edge technology to light up the night sky during March. 

Projections of famous quotes from the Scottish Enlightenment period will illuminate buildings along George Street and Rose Street in March. The event celebrates the literary and built heritage of locations including Charlotte Square and the Melville Monument in the city’s Poetry Garden, enLIGHTen will respond to the wisdom of great Enlightenment thinkers through new fiction and poetry by Gavin Inglis, William Letford, Kirsty Logan, Ken MacLeod, James Robertson and JL Williams, specially commissioned by Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust. enLIGHTen will be the first time dynamic projection mapping has been used for cultural purposes in Scotland. 

http://www.cityofliterature.com/

Emeli Sande - My Kind Of Love - KOKO London - 25.01.12

*Music Sites Today

NEW Music Sites (digital music services) 

Hype Machine – 1m Users.  Plays on iPhone. Andorid, Windows.  

Soundcloud – 8m Users. The Flickr of Audio. Sound design.

Soundhound -  Mobile phone platform plus share features.

Mobile Roadie - Apps for Artists

Mixcloud - Radio

.MXP4 - linked to Facebook. FB has 800 Users

Spotify (2m Users) and Pandora (60m Users) - Music streaming sites. Many of the new music sites work on a sharing basis.  

The Ease of Free Access

Authors are worried where the future of book sales is heading in this age of free access. I heard an author on the radio the other day saying back in the past writers (and artists and musicians also) were given time and allowed to fail in Public but this is not the case now.  Being able to sustain popularity after a breakthrough isn’t so easy. 

In the Book World festivals matter as book experts study the world book market and carefully evaluate the best writers out there. The music business by comparison with the book world is  'over-diversified' with the ease of access and time… it takes much longer to read a book after all! 

What does a new band need to do?  Oddly with all this internet activity and more music available than ever before, it is harder than ever to get heard!  When MTV started we had ONE excellent music channel, now we have many channels that are diluted. The hard part today is finding the ‘quality’ amongst it all. That is why independent Radio, Websites, DJs, Podcasts, Blogs etc. matter a great deal.

The ‘market-driven’ approach of today's music business takes a broad ‘democratic’ look at ‘polls’ which asks the media which artists they are already supporting and inevitably some of the more innovative music gets sidelined. Marketing polls matter for the likes of Live Nation, labels and the main music festivals.

However to quote Tony Wadsworth former head of EMI Records UK.

‘I’d prefer to listen to the opinion of one trusted blog, magazine or DJ that I’m confident has a history of turning me on to good new artists, rather than the democratic view of the entire business.’ . In music some festivals matter – while some music festivals are mostly Label controlled.