The Tooth Fairy Wasted My Day

I’d like to start this week by saying a big thank you to Dutch Courage for last weeks insight to the band and their involvement with the NHS campaign.

This week I was to take a wonder down to Quad Studios in Leicester to have a look at their facilities and what they have on offer for local musicians, but unfortunately I had to make and emergency visit to the dentist.

My little experience with the dentist managed to mess up the whole day so I will give you the details I know, then fill in the blanks when I manage to make a visit to Quad Studios.

I came across Quad Studios because of their involvement with Leicester’s NHS Teen Pregnancy Campaign, in the same was I discovered Dutch Courage.

Quad Studios supplied the facilities to visually record parts of the NHS campaign, these can be seen in the many short episodes featured on their YouTube Group.

I do not know the history behind Quad Studio but I do know they have seven well equipped rehearsal rooms and a one recording studio.

What really has me interested is how they came to be involved with such a large NHS campaign.

Next on the list ……

The Note Worthy Project

Well it’s alive and kicking ……but when I went to distribute the finished CD’s the venues involved were all closed haha! I will not

lose or be detoured thought.

All the bands involved are below;

1. Booby Traps – My Town

2. Wayward Trippers – Smile

3. Smokin The Profit – There’s No Warning

4. Razzamatzz – This Situation

5. Paula Driver – Should’ve

6. Capture The Flag – Stickers On The Car

http://www.myspace.com/capturetheflaguk

7. Black Page Turns – Code Of Silence

http://www.myspace.com/blackpageturns

8. Elizabeth Cornish – Make Amends

9. Autohype – Disco Below

10. Formal Warning – Love Letter

11. Gone Feral – Irrelevant

12. The Heroes – Blue Rave

13. The Utopians – I Can See It

14. Neon Sarcastic – Another Friday Night

15. Paris Revolution – The Devils Got A Friend

16. Tommy’s Heroes – Ali Ali

17. Hotel Zulu – Plans Of Destruction

18. The Rassoodocks – On The Edge

I'd like to say a BIG thank you to Nick Rose my sound engineer for all his help with The Note Worthy Project, for those of you interested nick also has his own recording facilities and can be found at Raindrop Records.

Well due to the trip down the dentist, this week has not been filled with surprises, fingers crossed for the next.

All the best and have fun

Adam @ OSOM

Keeping Leicester Alive With Music

Talking Sex With Dutch Courage

This week’s blog is a little different, giving you an entertaining insight into one of Leicester’s unknown bands.

In the previous blog I was encouraging you all to get out and try something new and look at new forms of exposure for music. One of the groups/organisations I can personally recommend is LineOut, an amateur film society dedicated to creating feature films, short films and even music videos, so I strongly recommend taking five minuets out of your busy day and having a look.

Right then on to the lowdown and gossip from Dutch Courage:

So then guys nice to actually meet you, let’s start with introductions, who’s who, how old and what do you play?

I’m Phil Blackler I’m 17 and I play Bass and sing lead vocals

I’m Joe Humphries I’m 17 and I bang the drums and sing

I’m Ollie Griffin I’m 17 and I play Rhythm and I’m not allowed to sing...

I’m Tom Gooding I’m 17 and I play lead guitar and sing

How long has the band been together?

P.B: we’ve been together as Dutch Courage for about 18 months but we mucked about as a 5 piece for a bit before we started to get serious.

So then guys I have to ask, who is the drunk of the group and did they come out with the name.

J.H. To be honest, I think the drink tends to get shared out pretty evenly between us guys!

O.G: well, going on last night’s performance I’d have to say Tom is the drunk of the group. He should take a few tips from me in the future, I was much more respectable.

How on earth did a young group like yourselves get involved with a teen pregnancy campaign fronted by the NHS?

J.H. We were lucky enough to be found on MySpace by a local promotions company who asked us to audition for the part. The audition must have gone okay because they asked us back.

O.G: I heard that they were told to choose the best looking band.

So it wasn’t a drunken experience with some sexy groupies gone wrong?

J.H. Kind of more like how to be safer whilst having drunken experiences eh Phil

O.G: Phil, you’re the one that gets all the girls in this band, I reckon your antics had something to do with it.

What was it like being involved in the NHS campaign?

T.G. It was good to do something different, we felt quite important, and also we got a free pizza which is always good!

P.B it was a very different experience for us because we'd never done anything like that before. All the filming was done really well and the whole thing was written and directed brilliantly. We spent the day there doing our bit and the actors were all a good laugh to be around. We had to give one of the actors, Rav, a 10 minute quick fire guitar lesson to make him look as though he had any musical expertise whatsoever - that was fun!

O.G: It gave us a real insight into what it would be like to have to film a music video and the time it takes

Have you gained anything from the whole experience, or are you all just more clued up on the acts of safe sex?

O.G: You gained a few extra numbers for your phone didn't you Phil from some of the extras

T.G And Ollie you learnt its best to use a condom didn’t you?

Ha ha well thank you lads it’s been a pleasure and I look forward to hearing you live and good luck for the future.

You can check out Dutch Courage on MySpace and then have a look at the music in the NHS Teen Pregnancy Campaign.

The Note Worthy Project

Well this is still going ahead but I have almost given up on having a deadline date as every time I make one it gets waylaid by some sort of issues I didn’t expect. Having said that The Note Worthy Project CD sound be finished this week lol

Apart from that nothing too interesting has happened over the week so I will not fill you in with all the boring details.

Well for now have fun and enjoy

Adam @ OSOM

Keeping Leicester Alive With Music

Looking Through New Doors To Find New Opportunities

This week’s blog is a little of the beaten track and not all about what I have been up to within the week, but a little bit about other hidden outlets for local music that you might not have thought about, but could still be very valuable nevertheless.

So What Are You Not Doing

As you well know music is added to everything, shops, gyms, shopping centres, cinemas, bars the list is endless but have you ever thought about armature film societies?

Leicester has a thriving film society that pulls together all types of enthusiast that want to create individual works of art; all of these films, unless silent will use music to complement and highlight various aspects of their film.

This has two major benefits;

First; the director will be promoting their film and at the same time promoting your music, not only will it be played in the film but shown in the credits.

Second; if you are polite, friendly and punctual the odds are that they will recommend you and your music to other directors, other film enthusiasts and you can well find your music appearing on more and more films.

If I still haven’t got you convinced this is a worthy path to walk, I urge you to take time out to watch the latest campaign from Leicester NHS regarding teen pregnancy and the much talked about ‘banned YouTube video'.

The campaign has been created using music from local band Dutch Courage, a four piece from Market Bosworth formed in early 2008.

The campaign features there music heavily across the six episodes that follow along like a local soap opera on YouTube.

Next week I will have Dutch Courage answering questions about how they got involved in the NHS campaign, what they think about the campaign and just generally digging up the dirt and maybe a little bit of gossip.

This Weeks Workload

Well this week just like every other has been cram packed with hard work but I don’t seem to see the fruits of my labour so clearly this week.

I have The Note Worthy Project CD’s and case covers printed and had hoped the project would have been rolled out this week but as with music all was and still is not as easy as it seems. I still however want the first CD out ASAP but only time will tell.

I have also had more meetings with Demon FM and there exposure team, this is looking very promising something to look forward to in the future.

The thing that made me smile most this week has been the phenomenal performance of the slightly strange provocative form of griller marketing I started about four weeks ago, ‘Sexy Underwear’. The group has excelled this week hitting 1,500+ new fans a day moving from 6,000 members at the beginning of the week to 17,000+ buy the end of the week.

Well I think that’s it for today, I have just received a copy of Dreamweaver and I’m now off to play around with website idea’s and designs.

Have fun and enjoy

Adam

Keeping Leicester Alive With Music.

Working With A Demon

Phew we….. That’s it, officially I am exhausted.

When I had originally put a completion time of four weeks on ‘The Note Worthy Project’ I now see that might have been a little optimistic.

However the project is going incredibly well and is almost complete, only one week behind which is astounding when I look at the greater scale of things, but I still feel a little annoyed at myself for not completing on time.

For me not managing to finish within the time scale leaves me feeling like I have let other people down, let myself down.

I have to continually tell myself that this is not a business, I might like to run OSOM like a business but in reality it is more of an extreme hobby that takes over a lot of my spare/free time. So considering the above to arrive one week short to a dead line I feel a little better.

The Note Worthy Project Update

Well I you read above the project is almost completed and all going well will be handed out on Monday 22^nd June to three participating locations, O-Bar, Hub Bar

and Sophbeck (still needs to be finalised).

The idea of tag-lines has proven rather tricky to obtain and has hindered the process, so to rectify the problem I’m going to be laying down some temporary vocal tag-lines.

This is not what I want and believe one of the most unique aspects of the project was the personalised tag-lines from the various artist and locations so for them not to be compiled with the CD is upsetting.

Taking a huge step forward I have been in contact with the many great people down at Demon FM and was honoured when Aimee Morrison invited me on as a guest on her show to explain about the OSOM idea and ultimately The Note Worthy Project. Bright and early on Friday 5^th June I was with Aimee on the Easy Riser show from eight till nine and it was brilliant, a real eye opener and a great pleasure to meet some body who takes great pride in the presentation, performance and quality of their show.

There are plans to continually work with the guys and galls down at Demon FM to help the local music scene.

Tying up the week I have sent out emails to;

The Highcross (Leicester’s shopping centre)

The Curve (Leicester’s theatre)

The Leicester Mercury (Local newspaper)

Time to sit back and see what the next week brings and what ill be blogging about next week.

For now all the best have fun

Adam

Keeping Leicester Alive With Music

The Note That Really Is Worthy

Again this week has been true to form, tremendously active and has brought life to Leicester’s newest addition to a local musician’s promotional toolkit 'The Note Worthy Project'.

Yes yes yes I know that sounds nothing like Ear forever, Right Ear Right Now, Easy Listener, or the many other idea’s I had previously had and posted in my blog, but that was the trail of thought I was walking at the time.


New title The Note Worthy Project how did it come to life?

Well the name actually came from a work colleague (David), I had explained my idea to him for part of a logo using a musical note and the names I had come up with around that, things such as; Personal Note - Note Perfect – Ear My Notes – The Local Note – Note Listening –
Leicester Note – My Note To You.
David then said ‘what about note worthy, that’s a recognised phrase’ the more I started to look and analyze it the more it seemed to be perfect, and so Note Worthy was named and branded, time for a logo.


One part of the logo I had in mind, the bit I really had my mind set on was a musical note (quaver). That image would then be altered to hold a collage of other images inside the note, these images were going to be all local bands, groups, fans, gigs etc.

I was keen to use the image of a quaver because of its multi cultural and multi lingual capabilities, by this I mean any person male or female of any age of any country would be able to associate the image with music and for that image to be filled with the music fruits of Leicester was intended to be personalised to the city.

My intensions for the retro wallpaper background is to show the contrast between new, old and current, I also like the symmetry and striking bold colours you consistently get in retro designs.

So where will I hear The Note Worthy Project?

As this is still a relatively new idea I am trilling the project in only a hand full of venues for market research. Once I have collected data and feedback from the select locations the project will be reworked and the creases ironed out.

The venues will include O-Bar, Hub Bar and Sophbeck (this one is still to be finalised). I have also set the wheels in motion with Leicester's newest public attraction the Highcross Shopping Centre, by this I mean I have taken steps to find the individual who I will need to set up a meeting with to discuss the matter further.

When will the project be launched?

Working with bands will never be the easiest of tasks on my agenda so my initial outlook of four weeks may be stretched to five and a half weeks.

The music has and still is being collected, the tag-lines are well non existent at the minute and it looks like I will have to temporally record them myself, so the grand finale for the project is to compile the tracks on the first ever Note Worthy CD.

This is where my sound man Nick Rose and his very new company Raindrop Records comes in, we will sit-down and work the music and tag-lines in to a compilation fit for distribution to the select venues.

Have fun and enjoy

Adam @ OSOM
Keeping Leicester Alive With Music