Sorry about this, but anyone waiting to read my interview with Bob Taylor, founder of Taylor Guitars, as trailed on the front page for several few weeks, might be in for a bit of a wait. At the end of December 2005, MI Pro, the magazine scheduled to publish it, folded.
At the time of writing, there seems to be a possibility that the title might be bought, but in the meantime, a new Musical Instrument Industry trade magazine, Music Trade News, is being launched by MB Media - publishers of the excellent consumer music titles, Guitar Buyer and Drummer - and I have (very gratefully!) accepted a berth on board. The Bob Taylor interview may appear there, or in another title. Either way, its appearance looks like being delayed. I'll keep you posted.
Also tragically orphaned was a lengthy two-part biographical interview with the legendary Charlie Watkins - the man who more or less invented modern PA systems. Part One appeared in the final edition of Audio Pro (published by the same company as MI Pro), which leaves Part Two without a home. I'm talking with various people about this, in the hope of finding a solution. Again, I'll keep you posted. There doesn't seem much point just posting the first part on its own, so please forgive the delay until I work something out.
Meanwhile, whether MTN will be publishing the type of industry profiles I have been featuring here, remains to be seen, but it won't be taking on the Family Trees series. That sound you just heard was my sigh of relief - the series was proving extremely hard work and I'd been making grumbling noises about it for many months. Be careful what you wish for, grasshopper...
I will gradually be putting the many archived Family Trees on this site, however, so anyone looking for them will, in the absence of back issues of MI Pro, have a source.
Finally, my sincere thanks to Gez Kahan and the MI Pro team for having published so much of my work over the past few years and my best wishes for their next ventures.
I'll get a proper job one day, Mum... when I grow up. Honest!
Developments, developments! The ill-fated Bob Taylor interview will now appear, after all, in MI Pro, the magazine which originally commissioned it - the title having been purchased out of receivership and being graced with a March re-launch by its new owners.
Shortly after it appears in MI Pro, I'll put it on here, so that lovers of Mr Taylor's fine acoustic guitars can read it for themselves.
From then on, all my MI trade work will be appearing in the new UK trade magazine, Music Trade News, with which I've reached an exclusive agreement.
Meanwhile, I have an interview with the redoubtable Dave Bronze (bass player with, among others, Eric Clapton), which is shortly to appear in the UK's Bass Guitar Magazine. There are also one or two other things simmering away, destined to be revealed later. Who said I can't do suspense?
Finally, another magazine I write for, Music Mart, now has a blog of its very own, the brainchild of its go-ahead editor, John Moore. I've put a link on the front page - all are welcome.
My sincere apologies to anyone who has looked in expecting updates. They have been - and sadly, still are - pending. Here's why. MI Professional (under new ownership) published my interview with Bob Taylor in their April re-launch issue. I have one or two things to sort out before I reproduce it here, though I intend to, as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Music Trade News (MTN), which has seen fit to bestow upon me the grand title 'Associate Features Editor' (it's ok, there's really no need to bow), has proved a hard taskmaster. As I write this, in early May, we are already putting the third issue to bed. The magazine's more news-driven format doesn't allow for some of the more expansive interviews and features I had previously written for MI Professional, so I'm not yet sure how much of the material I contribute to it will prove appropriate for this site - though some, undoubtedly, will. Expect to see it soon, as the dust finally begins to settle from the initial launch burst and I can collect my thoughts.
Meanwhile, other articles are on the way: yet another interview with Chris Martin (the real one - not the guy from Coldplay), interviews with those other two superb US acoustic guitar builders Collings and Breedlove, a feature I'm working on with Groove Tubes and possibly some work on further unravelling the WEM, Matamp and HiWatt stories - though my duties for MTN and various bouts of travelling may preclude that sort of detailed research for a while.
Anyway, I'm still here if you are. Expect copy soonest. Which is what I tell all my editors.
Speaking of new material, at long last the Bob Taylor interview is available. I hope fans of his superb Taylor acoustic guitars will enjoy it.
I've also added a link to Gez Kahan's website. Gez was the founder and editor of MI Professional, and is now a fellow contributor to Music Trade News. He's one of the most astute observers of the UK MI industry, so it's certain to be a good read.
While Music Trade News continues to keep me busier than I'd imagined possible, there are also other plans and schemes coming to fruition, the chief of which being a series of commissions from Oyster House Publishing - the company that publishes Bass Guitar and Acoustic magazines.
As both magazines are bi-monthly, the plan is that I interview key industry figures in each publication, alternating between acoustic and bass specialists. The acoustic series began with a new Chris Martin interview (which will be published shortly and will follow on this site a few weeks later) and continues with a fascinating interview with Kim Breedlove.
Other makers in line for 'the treatment' will include Collings Guitars, but Acoustic's Editor, Steve Harvey, and I have yet to finalise who will be following. All suggestions gratefully received!
Interestingly, for Bass Guitar, Steve tells me that readers on the magazine's online Forum have indicated a preference for articles about British bass aficionados - which is fair enough as they tend to be overlooked in other publications. Expect to read interviews over the next year with luminaries including Mark Gooday of Ashdown, Chris May of Overwater, Rob Green, of Status, and others.
Finally, on the Pro Audio front, I recently covered the surround sound system used by Britannia Row for Roger Waters 'Dark Side Of The Moon' gig in Hyde Park, for a US publication. There are still details to iron-out but I hope to be able to put something online before too long.
After a fairly nail-biting period during which it came to light that Trinity-Mirror (the publisher of Music Mart, for which I've written for getting on for a decade) was in the process of selling all its 'Mart' family titles, Music Mart has fallen into the eminently capable hands of Sound On Sound, which has exciting plans to revitalise the magazine. Fortunately for me, those plans seem to include an expanded role for my friend The Pub Genius. They have also asked me to continue my monthly column (I really must get around to making some of those available here) and have asked whether I would be willing to contribute more features. That one gets filed under 'flattering, but where do I find the time?'. Only a percentage of what I write makes it onto here (much of my work is either transient, news-related stuff, or just too specialised for a website), and I'm pretty much working to capacity now.
That said, any freelance writer who grumbles about his workload deserves flogging to death with a Smith Corona typewriter ribbon. So I shan't.
Either way, it's excellent news that dear old Music Mart is at last in the ownership of people who not only love making music but who are also very good at publishing magazines.
Meanwhile, the Britannia Row/Roger Waters 'Dark Side Of The Moon' story which I mentioned last month has now been published in the eminent US Pro Audio magazine, Live Sound. It's my first job for them and I hope there will be more to come. After a decent interval, the article will appear here.
Music Mart seems to be settling down nicely under the ownership of the Sound On Sound team and I have one or two features planned for them over the coming months, which will run in addition to my monthly column, a section of Music Mart's news pages and the Pub Genius. I'll post them here, as and when.
Meanwhile, Music Trade News is establishing itself very successfully as the UK musical instrument industry's main trade magazine. My involvement with it over the past year, as Features Editor, turns out to have been slightly mis-titled, as I seem to be chasing and writing a lot of news stories too. I enjoy this aspect of the job (I started as a news reporter, after all) but it means that even less of the work I produce ends-up on here. Then again, neither does much of my trade-related feature writing. I don't imagine most visitors really want to read about the trials and tribulations of amplifier distributors, the life of a sales rep and the perils of pan-EU distribution!
And so to the December deadlines. Why is it that a two day holiday results in the loss of a week (sometimes more) out of journalists' production schedules? Do printers really get such generous holidays?
The opportunity to interview Henry Juszkiewicz, the man who bought and rescued Gibson Guitars, came just after the recent Los Angeles NAMM show and I jumped at it. The story will feature in Music Trade News, so I offer no apologies for it being yet another very trade-orientated piece. Players interested in what has gone on behind the scenes with one of the world's two biggest guitar brands might also find it interesting, even if they're not in the industry.
Meanwhile, after a six year reign as Editor of Music Mart, John Moore left the job, in the middle of January. Like all the contributors to the magazine, I greatly enjoyed working with John, who was always a very open-minded editor and fought hard for his writers. I don't know if he has another job yet, but I wish him very well. How Music Mart might change as a result of John's unexpected departure has been the subject of a lot of speculation, but only time will tell.
Eagle-eyed readers might notice the removal of Allen & Heath's MD, John Rogers, from the 'coming soon' list. The plan was that the interview would coincide with the launch of a mysterious 'exciting new product' at the imminent Frankfurt Music Messe. This has now been put back till September's PLASA show, in London, and so has the interview. In the meantime, I've been writing - but almost all of what I've produced has been too 'tradey' for a general website, so there's just one update this month: a fascinating story about a British acoustic guitar importer that decided to have its latest range made in Vietnam, and despatched the respected British luthier, Phil Davidson, to offer help and advice.
Apologies for the lack of updates recently. Blame exhibitions if you like - not least the fabulous London Guitar Show, held this year, for the first time, in London's Docklands. Once described as the largest building site in Europe, the former docklands area of East London was once nothing but a massive area of rusting cranes and abandoned, heavily polluted post-industrial hell. In the past 20 years, however, it has been utterly transformed and while I'm at the very back of the queue when it comes to admiring modern architecture, even I have to admit the transformation has been impressive.
And so was the LGS! There are still some notable absences from what is easily the UK's biggest guitar show - and they should be ashamed of themselves. For everyone who wasn't too lazy or too superior to make the effort, it as a massive hit with most of the major guitar and amp brands represented and vast public turnout. I spent my time looking at new products and talking with people, which was how I came to miss the seminar by Steve Vai and what was, by all accounts, a blinding set from the Blockheads. I'm still kicking myself.
If you are in London next year, or have some way of getting here, make a point of it. Early suggestions are that the show is going to be even bigger.
Meanwhile, much of what I've written for the past couple of months has, again, been too 'tradey' for a general readership (do you really care about trade discounts, the pressure on margins and why you should stock Brand Z guitars? If you do, let me know and we'll put you on the mailing list for Music Trade News!). But my interview with Overwater's Chris May was in Bass Guitar magazine and so I've put that on here and there are others on the way.
I wasn't joking about e-mails, either. There's a link on the front page. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who reads the site - especially if you have any requests or suggestions.
And this month's excuse is that I'm in the process of moving house. Anyone who has done it (which I suppose means most people) will know what that entails. To keep things going, I've finally got the interview with Remo Belli up on the site and will try to keep all the plates spinning. Honest!
OK, I lied. Back in July I said I'd try to keep updating this site, even though I was moving house. The good news is that the latter of those two things came to pass - though not without some chaos along the way. The bad news is that the site has been neglected for months - and I know only to well how frustrating it is when a site owner appears to give up. I haven't... but I do need to find some mechanism for updating more easily.
Through it all, of course, the big wheel of the publishing cycle kept rolling around, and I have, if nothing else, accumulated quite a lot of new material, which I will try to get up here in coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the major news since July has been that Music Mart's owners, Sound on Sound, decided to retitle and relaunch the magazine. Thus, in September, 'Performing Musician' arrived on the news stands - and it's starting to look like a major success.
In many respects, this was a long overdue change. Tagging any UK publication with 'Mart' condemns it to sit alongside the ranks of other magazines with a 'Mart' name - most of which are advertising rags, dwelling near the bottom end of the market. Music Mart outgrew such humble origins over a decade ago, but still (unjustifiably) suffered from that association, so a change of title was called for.
As it turned out, SOS didn't just change the title. A lot of work went into a significant redesign, while the editorial content was put on steroids and sent down the gym.. As a consequence, PM is a very different animal from dear old Music Mart. Though it's acquired something of Sound On Sound's gravitas (some of its guitar reviews, for example, ought to have one or two rival mags looking to their laurels - PM's are of a different order), for some reason they're still employing me. So the Pub Genius now occupies PM's inside back cover, I'm contributing twice as much news each month and I've even held on to my columnar soap box!
PM aside, Music Trade News goes from strength to strength (though much that I write for it is too orientated towards a trade audience to be worth posting here) and I was flattered to be asked by Acoustic Magazine to write an appreciation of the legendary acoustic guitarist, Davy Graham (the man credited with inventing DADGAD open tuning), which they are using to accompany a feature on the creation of his new Martin guitar and a, rare, interview.
And now the Christmas and New Year deadlines don't so much beckon as lurk behind the hedge at the end of the lane, with a nasty smile on their face and a threatening axe... At times like these, I often think: I coulda been a compander.
You'd think I'd be used to it by now - that quintessential freelance sensation of suddenly having the ground chopped from beneath your feet. But I'm not. The main magazine I have been working on for the past two years, Music Trade News, was sold, in July, to our rivals, MI Pro - who promptly closed it down.
Fortunately, MI Pro decided they wanted me on board, so I now find myself swanning around with the grand title Editor at Large on MI Pro and Associate Editor of its sister title, Audio Pro.
In one of those marvellous media roundabout moments, it means I'm virtually back where I was a few years ago, when MI Pro and, later, Audio Pro, were started by my colleague, Gez Kahan.
When his company ran into difficulties, both of Gez's titles - MI Pro and Audio Pro - were sold to UK trade publisher Intent Media and Gez and I went to Music Trade News, which was edited by Phil Ward.. However, Gez's Assistant Editor, Andy Barrett, went on to become the new editor of MI Pro and Audio Pro.
Confused? You will be!
The upshot is that now Music Trade News has gone and I'm back working with Andy again.
But wait - there's more! In addition to writing for MI Pro and Audio Pro, I'm continuing to contribute to Performing Musician, which seems to be going from strength to strength. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to PM's Dave Lockwood and Ian Gilby for being so supportive during the brief hiatus, when it looked like I had lost around two thirds of my income, following the sale of MTN. The upshot of that is that I will be writing even more for PM than I have been. Thanks, chaps!
And now for something different - Acoustic Guitar Buyer. Though MB Media, the publishers of Music Trade News, sold it to our rivals and, by all rights, ought to be off my Christmas card list, I understand why they did it and have a good working relationship with Graham Butterworth, their MD.
MB publish two excellent consumer titles - Guitar Buyer and Drummer - and, in the course of talking with them about the state of the UK musicians' magazine market, we agreed there was a yawning gap for a user-friendly publication for electric guitarists (i.e. readers of Guitar Buyer) who realised that now is possibly the best time there has ever been to buy an acoustic guitar, but just didn't know where to start.
Cue Acoustic Buyer.
AB will start life as a one-off supplement to one of the November issue of Guitar Buyer. I'm currently in the throes of deciding the content, appointing reviewers and... all the rest. It's good to be back taking the full responsibility for a publication again.
If Acoustic Buyer is well received as a supplement, it may become a regular fixture.
As for this site, one of the reasons why it has been so quiet of late has been the changing nature of what I've been writing. As what I contributed to MTN got ever more trade orientated, it became less interesting for a wider audience. That may change slightly now I am with MI Pro and Audio Pro, as the focus is likely to shift a little - we'll see. Meanwhile, some of the articles I am working on for Performing Musician and the forthcoming Acoustic Buyer, will undoubtedly find their way here as they are written for a non-trade readership.
So that's quite a stack of new challenges. Feet to be found for MI Pro and Audio Pro, a wider brief for Performing Musician and an entirely new magazine to play with - Acoustic Buyer.
What was that old Pink Floyd title - 'One of the days I'll get an early night'?