Swindon Music down... again!!

What is happening with the Swindon Music forum, first up it was hacked. Ok this in itself is a bit silly when you use IPB and you don't keep your security up to date, it happened to the Furnace forum and the WM learnt his lesson, got it updated and managed to keep everybodys account and posts. When this happened everybody abandoned a very good forum and had a mass exodus to Swindon Music, which to be fair was stable and running whilst Furnace forum was down and did look good (plus it was "impartial").

However SM itself gets hacked and although it was recovered quickly it soon went down again with the loss of all the posts. If this wasn't enough a bespoke system was rebuilt that just wasn't as good as the old IPB based forum, it was clunky, looked awful in FireFox and was simply not good enough. Still people used it but some key people got tired of the mess around and drifted away.

Up until recently I was a regular poster but I found it was starting to get a bit nastier, a bit cliquey, a bit well elitist. It started to turn in a schoolyard gang culture where the 'cool' kids stuck together and kissed each others arses to make themselves look good and ganged up on anybody that was not following the consensus or threatened to rock the boat.
It was at this point I decided to leave and delete my account, only I couldn't because the design of the forum didn't facilitate this(!?) so I just don't post or really look on there. Problem was people on there I knew personally were sounding like dicks, I really would cringe at some peoples posts and opinions which didn't tally up with their personalities when down the pub.

Anyway I got a message last night to check out SM which I did and guess what? Down again! But with a huge advert for the Swindon Shuffle, so much for impartiality.
Hopefully this time a wake-up call will be heeded by the powers that be at SM, already people are talking about totally abandoning it and going back to using the Furnace Forum which after all this time is still chugging on. I am using Furnace Forum if you want to chat with me there ;)

So I wonder whats going to happen next, will SM be fixed and everyone go back to the playground like nothing is wrong? If people go back will there be some users with backbone to speak out and really get things fixed? Or maybe people will go back to Furnace Forum and breath new life into the old place? Maybe we may see a new forum emerge from somewhere with new ideas and a fresh approach (if I only had the build something like this! LOL) ? We will see...

A new Swindon based record label? ;)

Yes, it could happen! Its been an idea of mine for a while but now I'm taking the first steps in building a new record label in Swindon.
There is many steps to doing it officially and properly (many people claim to have record labels of their own but that is rarely the case) and I intend to start following them this weekend.
Hopefully over the coming weeks you will see it emerge and I hope people will support it.
Watch this space :)

Acadamy like Venue in Swindon?

I have recently found out that an influential person in the Swindon music scene is planning to create a 2000 capacity venue right in the centre of town. It looks like the old bingo hall at Regents Circus could be converted to be such a venue.My views on this are complex, I have never been one of those shouting out for an Academy in Swindon in fact I think it could be damaging to the Music Scene. We have problems filling up Swindons smaller venues with punters let alone a 2k capacity venue! OK so the smaller venues generally have local originals bands and a venue of such size would have national (and international) acts on tours etc which brings me back to how would this help the local grass roots music scene? I think people are under the perception that the local acts will be involved somehow, this is a fallacy. For a large venue to hit capacity and make it commercially viable it must book acts that are of a size to pull in custom from other towns other than Swindon, this means big promoters in it for the money. Do you really think they would be bothering to contact local acts to support? No is the short and simple answer, most of the national acts will already have preferred support acts also a lot will be on a national tour where the acts usually travel with the circus that goes along with a large managed tour. Local acts wont get a sniff, neither will local promoters. "Oh but people will come from outside Swindon to check out the scene", again I believe this to be untrue. If you go to Bristol to see a band at the Bierkeller that are on tour, do you bother to check out any of the smaller local gigs? If you do hats off to yourself because I myself would be too concerned in seeing the band I travelled and paid good money to see.My personal feeling is that the large venue/Academy viewpoint is what the Swindon music scene sees as a 'Magic Bullet', i.e. a way of creating a large vibrant active music scene in one big shot without a huge amount of effort, I also see this effect happening with bands like 'The Alfonz', a good little band but nowhere near good enough to receive major radio airplay but Swindonites pin their hopes on them as the guiding lights to a better world. Its time to wake up and realise the key to a good Swindon music scene is the roots up, support of the local small venues and the up and coming bands that need nurturing. I believe if an act from Swindon 'Breaks thought' it will come from nowhere. They would of hardly touched the local music scene and gone on tour of the UK and been picked up by a small label or good management and the current Swindon music scene would be unaware of them until they start appearing on Jools Holland or the insides of NME.Then there would be a feeding frenzy of people in Swindon claiming to be their best mates and seen their first gig in the Vic or other such claims to fame, and everyone else will hate them and try to knock them down a peg.
A large venue would be nice as the point of view of seeing larger acts coming to Swindon and would be good for the gig going public in the area as it would save them going to places like Oxford, London, Bristol etc to see these bigger bands and for that fact I welcome it, however as a solution to all of Swindons musical problems I wouldn't hold my breath...

Pink Rooms - Saturday 3rd May - Evil-Ernies debut

Pink Rooms is a great venue. Its somewhere Ive had my eye on for a while but Ive never managed to get down there previously because a) I'm usually booked for something for the weekend, and b) I found it hard to find someone to come along with me. However this changed about 3 weeks ago with a random message through the MIM MySpace saying that The Pink Rooms were looking for new DJs and I should enquire. I did! And after a meeting with the lovely owner of the place I went down the 2 weekends to get the 'vibe' of the place and to see what I could do for them (the previous weekend I came down with that evil head-cold thingy) , I was impressed!
As you may be aware The Pink Rooms is a gay club but in saying that straight people are welcome and it has a real nice chilled atmos about the place. Its also busy, that particular weekend was quite slow in the kingdom of Swindonia but the club had hit its capacity (300) by 1am.
So last Thursday I did a wee trial for them, got the feel of their decks and mixer (a loverly DJM600 with fantastic effects processor) and after a few tunes testing the system I got into the swing of it. I did something right as I was asked to do the following bank holiday Saturday!
Saturday came and I had probs with my CD burner so my newly transferred vinyl cuts were unusable on the night :( bad times. Luckily though I have enough material to keep me going all night (the club closes at 5am so its a looong set).
Got to the club, stocked up on water and fired up the system for 11pm, started off gingerly with some cheesy pop and some really camp tunes so some of the older clientele keep moaning for, thought it best to keep 'em happy. Then I got requests for some 80's stuff which as luck would have it I keep a good stock of, the result? A good dance floor well before midnight, good going for a debut. I steered away into more indie then into the electro/nu-rave sounds, a slow start as the 80's bods pulled out but enough stayed on and few more added to the floor to make it worthwhile as I started blasting out some Crystal Castles and Boys Noize and the floor erupted again. More requests for RnB came in which is bit of a Pink Rooms staple, I did my best to oblige and the room was bouncing. I shifted up a gear and started hitting the house and dance (with a bit of pop thrown in) and I must say I was really motoring, its a great thrill to see a packed dance floor going mental to your tunes and you just feed off it. A great crowd makes your night.
I handed over to one of the residents 'Dion' at about 3.30am, 4 and half hours at it and I felt ecstatic! I proceeded to enjoy Dion's and get royally trashed! In the club I had several people congratulate me and I was bowled over by the genuine good feelings of people in there.
This was one of the best nights DJing Ive had in Swindon for a long time, I hope Ill be back down there soon for another blast of a night :D

Wha? Start of something... maybe.

Its a funny old thing, the Swindon music scene. It took me years to settle into it when I moved from Birmingham (long story, maybe for another time?). Things are definateley differnt down here, being used to the Midlands way of doing things, lets give an expample: In Birmingham if you are new to a place you will go to a local club where people play your kind of music, do your kind of thing. You go to the bar, you turn to the guy/gal next you and and just engage in chit chat. They will more than likly smile, tell you the club is a great place and they would wish you a good time. Fast forward to Swindon... do this and that very person standing next to you just stares at you like you just laid a fresh turd on their doorstep and then turn away and ignore you. I went to several clubs when I first moved into Swindon, Level 3, Brunel Rooms, Po nah nahs etc the same attitude was everywhere, every place had its clique where if nobody knows you then you automatically must be treated as a threat their thin bubble of existence so you must be discouraged at all costs. OK over-dramatisation but I felt so out of place in these first formative months in Swindon that I went back 'home' on a very regular basis at an alarming cost to my bank balance. After a while I just persevered, found like minded souls and steadily eased my way into the 'inside' of this clique.
Why write this blog? I don't know, maybe I feel like a story needs to be told? Maybe my pearls of wisdom can be used by others? Or maybe it just a release for the things that clang round my brain like the last penny in the bottom of a huge whisky bottle?
My comments on Swindon are my opinion from my point of view, I'm not here to upset or annoy but maybe some of the commentary will cut, if it does I'm truly sorry and always get in contact if you want further explanation or to correct something that is inaccurate.
Anyway have a read and hopefully enjoy my musings, if not tough there is about million other of these blogs out there so go and read them instead!