FESTIVAL DREAM - QUEUE FOR TICKETS OR COVER YOUR EARS?

IT’S the middle of summer, allegedly, and the music festival season is in full swing. As I won’t be attending any, I’m using my blog slot this week to compile my own dream festival line up.

There are some notable and superb exceptions from my musical collection like Dylan, Springsteen, Cash, Zeppelin, Sam Baker, Mary Gauthier, The Handsome Family and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, for example. But they can always play a fringe festival.

It’s a fun flick through my CD racks – and it would be equally enjoyable to see your picks.

Neil Young

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WxIkHpnVtE&feature=related

Gillian Welch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FM8ui2ByUI

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqFPqEwY6to&feature=related

Steve Earle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyD5qVbGhbo&feature=related

Morrissey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmbcPONXRHQ

Richmond Fontaine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChGak4-qNxI&feature=related

Eels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_1cNtZ1h4o

Rory Gallagher

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxiEMpcI83E

Lucinda Williams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1ffuDoy6I

Four Tet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWBDzHqXZqk&feature=related

The National

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEZJ_sjG7II&feature=relmfu

James McMurtry & The Heartless Bastards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcBWlblRDjg&feature=fvwrel

Pet Shop Boys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g47JEcwpMyY

Cat Power

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhUC3yjM6vU&feature=fvwrel

SUPERGROUP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gzglg7WDmQ

A BIZARRE BUSINESS - THIS WEEK I'LL BE AN ASTRONAUT

I have encountered many different things since setting up in business in the late 90s – the good, the bad, the hugely gratifying and the downright impossible.

The praise of people is always welcome and heartening. Complaints, justified or otherwise, have to be dealt with. The demands need to be put in context and the expectations matched to reality. I like the mix and doing my best for clients who invest so much in me.

I’ve learned that keeping a level head is essential. Listening to sage advice is very important. I believe in good manners in business (as this blog has mentioned before) at all times and dealing with people respectfully.

And in the main I have been fortunate with clients from the public and private sectors who have been a pleasure to work with, to socialise with.

However, I’ve just experienced a business world first. Without naming any names, let me explain. But I do think this bizarre.

At two meetings at the tail end of last year, I was invited to discuss PR support activity with a company for a series of events it was planning. Before the second, I submitted a detailed proposal that included costs. The company said it was pleased with the advice I had given, the suggestions offered and that the proposal was “excellent” and suited in every way. A contract was prepared but not signed as no starting date had been finalised.

Then the first proposed event was postponed so any work I had to do was, rightly, delayed and the company said it would be “in touch.” Busy with other clients, I did not think this was unduly remarkable.

But, when I checked the date for the second planned event on the original list I had been given, it was obvious a fair chunk of activity was quickly required to ensure the strategy agreed could be carried out to the client’s advantage.

I contacted the company several times and heard nothing in return. I didn’t want to badger them and as the day of the proposed second event was getting closer and closer, I had increasing concerns that any worthwhile PR support activity could be achieved.

Then out of the blue, a new “PR” company announced its arrival via a social media platform.

One of its listed clients, its only client actually, was the company I’d been speaking with – and that’s because those behind the new “PR” outfit were those in the company I’d been talking to.

I did smile even though this was a surprise development, bizarre even. I wasn’t aware those involved with the company who had sought my assistance had any expertise in PR: that’s why I was being hired, I reckoned. Silly me.

If those involved – and on their website they rattle on about PR/Marketing but focus their words on marketing mainly – believe they can undertake an efficient and effective PR campaign for their business and their events, then good luck to them. How they can help meet the PR needs of any other client they manage to secure must be open to question.

What’s happened is a bit like me saying: “This week I’m going to become a photographer, a web designer, or an accountant, no wait, an astronaut.” If I did, nobody in their right mind would hire me, would they?

Of course, there’s been no communication from the company, even out of courtesy, to say we won’t be working together. An associate suggested I should write and ask them if my services are definitely no longer required, just to be awkward. But I haven’t and, frankly, don’t want to waste any more time on them.

I would never wish to work for an outfit so blatantly – it would appear – at odds with my own standards and straightforward approach.

DYLAN - ONE NAME, MANY TUNES

I readily admit that I was a fairly late convert to the words and music of Bob Dylan.

Pop and then prog rock dominated my early listening days, but I am glad I caught up with his Bob-ness. He is an unforgettable star.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM

I have only seen him live twice – both times in Glasgow. First time at the SECC was simply dire. I don’t remember the date, but I recall the gig with a shudder. Spot the tune was the popular game in the crowd that night.

Second time was on June 24 (significant number that) 2004 at Barrowland. This proved to be one of my favourite concerts of all time: I got goosebumps even reading the reviews. It was an immense performance buoyed by a boisterous crowd loving every minute of it, whether in the sing-a-longs or in the hushed moments. We were there – and we swear we saw Dylan smile.

As it’s Dylan’s 70^th birthday next week, and there will be lots written and said about him, I thought I’d have a daft, no prize Bob quiz – and the answers are dead easy.

What are your top five Dylan tracks? Well, maybe not so easy as he’s written about a squillion of them. My top five change all the time – but I’ll start it off, and in no particular order.

Stuck Inside of Memphis With The Memphis Blues Again

Tom Thumb Blues

Not Dark Yet

Hard Rain

Forever Young

OK – let’s make it 10.

Shelter From The Storm

Masters of War

Like A Rolling Stone

Mississppi

Blowin In the Wind

OK 15.

You’re A Big Girl Now; I Believe In You; Don’t Think Twice – no, that’s plenty. Going to listen to lots of them now.

Please let me know your favourites – no simple task, I know.

STARTING OVER - A DAD AGAIN IN MY FIFTIES

This is the first blog post I have devoted to the subject of my becoming a Dad again in my 50s – but since my little boy, Adam is five this week, I reckon it would be OK to share some thoughts with you.

I’ll start off by saying that I love caring for him. The sleeplessness, the tantrums, the current spate of back-chat: none of this ever gets in the way of my love for this child, matched, of course, by my love for my darling wife, Maggie and my elder sons, Steven, 32 and Martin, 29. I’m a lucky man.

Adam is funny, chatty, bright, inquisitive, inventive, daring, quick and keen to learn, re-assuring, anxious to undertake tasks, as well as mischievous, messy, dogged with a fiery temper, and a very loud voice. A great mix in other words that prevents me, in the main, from reading a book, watching a film or listening to more than one CD track at a time when he’s around. I don’t mind.

Within minutes of his birth, I took off my T-shirt and laid him against my chest, looked at him and told him he was coming into a good family, that we would love him to bits and that he had two cracking big brothers who’d look out for him, too.

It was, as John Lennon sang, just like starting over. No it was starting all over again. I had seen two boys grow into fine, independent men.

But now I was reading the what the hell-do-we-do-next help books as much as first-time mum, Maggie. The dramas, the worries, the desire to keep him safe and happy that applied with Steven and Martin were back in action again with Adam. It’s an instinctive thing.

Stages of his infancy – like learning to walk – brought back great memories of things that my older boys did that had faded over the years as they grew and developed to be replaced by more up-to-date memories.

I’m not sure if I’m a different kind of Dad this time round, although maturity must be a positive thing. I might be a little more patient, but I suppose that’s debatable. My working life is different now compared to the 80s so I probably spend more time in Adam’s company. I play tennis, work out at the gym and go to live music gigs but I am more of a home bird now than I was when in my 20s.

Naturally, I do worry from time to time about the age gap between Adam and me, but I like to think I’m young at heart. I also worry more this time round that I am helping him as best as I possibly can – but when I look at my older sons, I reckon the evidence is that I’m doing alright.

I love all the changes and twists and turns he delivers. Adam is hugely quizzical and also matter of fact. When bathing him one night, he looked up to declare: “I love my Mum from here to the moon, but I don’t like you so much.”

Out on a bike ride last week he was advising me how to brake when going downhill without falling off. “I don’t want you to get hurt, Dad. Have you got any plasters?” Then he became annoyed with the litter dropped in the park. When the rain came on, he said: “Who ordered that?”

No two walks to the park are ever the same. One day we’ll be looking for golden statues, the next we’re counting the number of cats we see. These are things that have transformed my life, and maybe because of my age, they really lock in to my brain to be cherished.

An acquaintance in the same age bracket as me, also shares my experience as a Dad in his 50s again. He summed up his thoughts, when asked what it was like looking after a pre-school child one more time, as follows: “well, it takes me a little longer to get up off the floor after playing with the toys than it did when I was a parent in my 20s.” That’s true.

But, doing this all over again does keep me young and smiling a lot. Thanks, Adam.

CHURNING OUT THE WORDS

I’ve been following the conversations and reading a range of articles on the issue of “churnalism” – and I am struggling to work out what the fuss is all about.

I run my own PR business and I am a former print journalist and when I started out in newspapers in the early 70s, PRs, as we know them today, were as rare as a news editor saying ‘thanks, well done” on a big story. Times have changed in PR, though I don’t know if news editors today are any more praiseworthy when it comes to the staff they have left.

Is the media becoming “a pawn” of the PR industry has been one question raised. My answer to that is: “We wish.”

The Media Standards Trust charity and its new website – good coverage of its launch was created by its PR team, incidentally – examines “news” of print and broadcast outlets, and measures up how much the information slavishly follows news releases from PR companies.

You can check the results for yourself http://churnalism.com/

In my experience, rarely – if ever – do newspapers or radio outlets or TV stations run a News Release word for word. The News Release can form the basis of news or feature copy for the media outlet concerned if and when editorial executives decide that the content is interesting enough for their readers/viewers. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s no secret that media outfits have slashed the size of their editorial teams. As a result, there are fewer journalists in house to drum up the ideas to fill the daily news, features, specialist schedules that in turn fill the following day’s papers or the evening news bulletins. PR companies can provide information, suggestions and opportunities for the Press to take a look at, develop or, as often happens, reject.

But PRs are not in control of the media, well, I’m not and never will be. Or want to be for that matter. As I say to hopeful clients, I have a measure of influence but no final control. After all, the best PR fed story in the world will vanish if a major disaster strikes or last-minute advert is needed for a page.

No journalist today - be they staff on a tabloid or a broadsheet or in a news agency - would be in their right mind to shovel News Releases into a paper or broadcast programme without all the usual, necessary checks being made. At times, the News Release submitted can even be tweaked, twisted and torn apart to suit a particular newspaper’s editorial agenda. We’ve all been there, but, thankfully, not that often.

http://www.prmoment.com/585/by-copying-press-releases-word-for-word-are-churnalists-journalists-destroying-the-authority-of-news.aspx

So any notion that journalists today are in any way sloppy and happy to grab a News Release with both hands, slap a by-line on it and submit it to their editorial superiors is fanciful in the extreme. Doesn’t sound like any of the fine journalists I know and deal with on a regular basis. In fact, that insults the good journos working flat out in news rooms where empty chairs outnumber the occupied.

On the other hand, there is nothing devious, cheap or nasty about PRs offering ideas to journalists, or supplying images because a media outlet doesn’t have resources to take one for themselves. But that’s a far cry from leading the Press agenda. I see my efforts as a PR of being only part of it and, yes, if my clients have a positive, profile-raising outcome, I reckon I’ve done my job pretty well.

Neither is the so-called lack of investigative journalism – being replaced by churnalism, some claim – the fault of the PR industry. The MPs’ expenses scandal was a big, full-on exemplary piece of investigative journalism, so that weakens that argument in some ways, doesn’t it.

To my mind, PRs and journalists benefit from each other’s existence. The journalist who gets the case study for a feature in time to meet a deadline because a PR has set something up is grateful, and so is the PR for a positive outcome. By the same token, the journalist who can’t persuade a PR to be more revelatory in some circumstances will be displeased. The PR whose briefing is distorted will also be far from chuffed.

The journalist getting, for example, the “big jobs boost story” is happy, the PR acting on behalf of the jobs’ boosting organisation is equally content. And the readers/viewers will be interested in new jobs. This is a simplistic example, I admit, but it does show the mutual benefits to both the Press and PR camps.

If you agree, I’d be pleased to hear from you. If you don’t, I’d like to hear what you think, too.

HOWLERS ON THE RADIO

I will be making every effort to catch this BBC radio programme on Monday, March 7 http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/news/gobbledygook-on-the-bbc.html

It’s the day the Plain English Campaign – http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ – holds its annual awards so I’m keenly anticipating gobbledygook howlers with the guilty named and shamed and suitably humiliated.

I am looking forward to hearing of one example from the NHS that took 229 words to define a hospital bed. Made or unmade, I don’t know.

I’ve blogged before on my love of plain English and I reckon I visit the Plain English Campaign’s excellent website regularly. I’ve often thought it would be great to work for them.

It can be amusing to berate those who drivel for a living and it is certainly infuriating to come up against buzzwords in business and elsewhere that mean absolutely nothing.

But news reports this week from the coroner’s inquest into the July 7 bomb attacks in London said that baffling jargon could costs lives as it caused confusion among emergency service personnel.

Do you have any idea what “a conference demountable unit from the management resource unit” is? Me neither.

It is a mobile control room – so why not say that?

This bureaucratic bluster prompted one MP to suggest that jargon is “often used by people who have been trained, rather than taught to think.”

Now that’s worrying, isn’t it?

For 30 years, the Campaign has proved to be one of the most powerful grass-roots movements in the UK. Its website is a delight and I suggest you try the grammar quiz – I got three wrong so my Dad would have been horrified.

It also has interesting comments including one from former Prime Minister Thatcher, who said: “Some people think that flowery language and complicated writing is a sign of intellectual strength. They are wrong.”

This is the only time I have ever agreed with her.

SUITS YOU, SIR

I like to wear a suit for business, I enjoy wearing a dinner suit for black tie functions as it brings out the Al Pacino in me and I love wearing a charcoal grey linen suit that was hand-made for me in Dubai as a gift from my darling wife, Maggie.

Suits are great and chic: Mad Men, Reservoir Dogs, The Blues Brothers, Men In Black fine examples of looking good.

I wouldn’t dream of seeing clients without wearing a suit or meet potential new ones casually dressed. I suppose it’s because I’ve always had to be smartly dressed for work – first of all in my days as a journalist when the first Chief Reporter I worked with would regularly say: ”Dress as if you were about to interview the Lord Provost” – and latterly in PR.

The reason for this sartorial discussion follows on from a BBC News website item that posed the question “Are Suits On The Way Out?” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12418046.

According to the report “a recent poll of 2,000 British workers by online bank First Direct found that only one in 10 employees wears a suit every day, more than a third of staff opt for jeans and only 18 per cent regularly wear a tie.”

It didn’t say what kind of jobs these people, men presumably, had. But, I suspect the majority would have been office workers of some kind: bankers, estate agents, financial advisers, lawyers, journalists and PR-types. Maybe not teachers, social workers or other professionals who can be more casually dressed, I would argue. And that doesn’t mean that the suits are more professional, it’s just that they operate in a different sphere, some might say a less arduous one but that’s a discussion not for this blog.

All in all, it’s down to workplace rules and regulations, or individual choice, if that’s permitted. I’m fairly relaxed about what people are wearing when they meet me, I have to say.

Doctors in jeans, no problem. Open-neck shirts for the chap behind the Post Office counter, absolutely fine. It actually reminds me of an appointment I had in London a few years ago with a PR company who were looking for some support in Scotland.

Suited and booted I headed south from a grey Glasgow into a scorching summer’s day in the capital. When I arrived at the firm’s offices near Tower Bridge, I was greeted by a young chap in a t-shirt, sandals, beach shorts and a brightly-coloured shirt. The only thing missing was the surf board.

“Crikey, Mike, are you not melting dressed like that?” he kindly asked. I was. My tie was loosened and jacket removed pronto.

When I worked in daily newspapers, Sundays were the Press’ equivalent of “dress down Friday.” Some executives turned up in hugely unappealing garb. One newsdesk man favoured tartan trousers that would have been more appropriate on a soldier on guard duty at Edinburgh Castle. Another reserved Sundays for sickeningly, garish shirts that you only wear to win a bet.

On weekdays in their suits, shirts and ties they looked more normal, though I use that term loosely.

In an earlier blog, I discussed my confusion over whether or not to wear a tie and today I mostly don’t. I put on a suit for business every day, but can’t remember the last time I wore a tie. A sharp suit and a neat shirt is a stylish combo, I reckon.

For me, wearing a suit for business is as natural as Superman with his underpants over his blue tights. Not sure about the colour co-ordination, mind you.

Any thoughts from either of the sexes on whether the suit deserves to be hung up in the wardrobe of history or if it still looks as good as I think it does?

Your views would be very welcome and interesting.