Tuesday 21 August 2007

blog rocking peep peeps

You will see an obvious gap in the posts to our blog, so what is the reason? I think pure plain bone idleness to be honest and just too many things to keep up to date. Facebook, Myspace, Website etc etc etc.

H O W E V E R... We shall endeavor to be a bit more talkative now.

SO as you will know our album is finished, it hits iTunes on September 3rd. We had an initial 1000 copies made so that we could use these to send to press & radio. As a bit of a tester we decided to start selling them via our myspace & main website. The response so far has been well... overwhelming and we are really pleased. What is more encouraging is that some people who have ordered the album have started to talk about it in various forums and really help spread the word, they have even started to defend us if there are any negative comments. This is amazing and is main reason why we decided to make an album, basically because of our love of music.

I'm going to try and make this blog as candid as possible... wait that has made me think of a story... more about that in a bit. Anyway what I mean is I think it's important to engage with people that show any kind of interest in Northern Kind. For over a year we have been fairly modest in promoting what we do, mainly because we have been making the album and didn't really want to shout about it until it was finished as not to big ourselves up too much. Now however that it is finished we want to tell everyone. YEY!

BUT it kind of feels wrong, because ultimately that makes me feel like I'm pushing people to buy our music and hand over cash for the privilege of hearing us. Don't get me wrong I'm in to free enterprise and the prospect of being rich but self promotion in music makes me feel a little dirty. I think this is where record companies have worked so well for bands as they separate the artistry from the business side. Making music is creative but then again so is marketing it. As an artist I love doing what I do and talking about it, but doing the hard sell just seems wrong.

Ultimately I'd love to earn a living from doing what I enjoy, but I already do and that is design related. So why do I do music? Well because it's part of me and always will be and I fucking love doing it. The feeling I get from writing something is one of the best feelings of accomplishment. Have you ever listened to a piece of music that completely lifted your spirits? well creating something is a million times better. When I collected our album from the plant I was content, content for that fact that I had achieved something I wanted to do. I didn't care if I sold any or if people liked it.

Sorry but in the words of Forrest Gump, "I'm pretty tired now" but before I go here is the "CANDID" story.

When I was young there was a TV program called CANDID CAMERA. It was a hidden camera show, for that very fact I had always thought that the word CANDID meant to hide things or to conceal something. So anyway 25 years or so later I found myself in a difficult meeting with a client. During the meeting my client said "may I be candid", I interrupted and said "well actually I'd rather you tell us what you were thinking" he said "well I'll be candid with you", I said "NO I want to know what you are thinking" so anyway you can imagine how stupid I felt when I learnt what candid actually meant.

Tomorrow I may talk about music and TV.

Turrah x

1 comment:

Northern Kind said...

also gonna start adding some photo's...