Category: d) The Dark Art of Marketing
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Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Part 7 – Sick Self Love
Interesting piece in the NYT recently by Frank Bruni. Belated grasp of things, but good that the talking heads are finally starting to notice what’s been going on under their talking noses for years. In a nutshell, the piece focuses on the eulogising of Aretha Franklin and John McCain. I don’t want to go anywhere…
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Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Episode VI: That’s Lovely But…
Okay, I’m basically going to demonstrate by example here. I’ve noticed recently that a certain website has started billing my guest-with-house-trio residency as an “award-winning quartet”. It’s very flattering and no doubt rather good for business, but I do feel I should set the record straight. Many of the soloists have indeed won awards and…
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Jazz London Live
If you’re ever in London or thereabouts and feel like a bit of jazz, please check out JazzLondonLive for extensive listings, gig and venue co-ordinates and musician biogs. This site was launched last year to take on the baton from Mary Greig’s venerable bible, Jazz in London (40-odd years in print and never missed a month). JLL is still growing,…
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Jazz in London Calling…
Sad to announce that Mary Greig, the indefatigable powerhouse behind the magazine Jazz in London, is having to step down after a mind-bending 43 years. Think about that for a moment. 43 years, month in month out, listing every jazz gig in London and surrounding areas. Being supportive, patient and good-humoured with everyone, bigshot or…
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Everyone’s a Critic…
Jazz musicians will possibly know Nicolas Slonimsky for his Thesaurus of Scale Patterns. Famously, Coltrane practised out of it and I come across musicians today who still explore it. Just the other day, I was chatting to a saxophonist about Tcherepnin’s nine-note scale (the interval pattern is half, whole, half, three times over, and it’s…
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Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Episode V: Biohazard!
Dealing with reviewers can be a trying business. The late Douglas Adams surely knew this. In Hitch Hiker, the researcher despatched to Earth knows so little about the place that he chooses the name of a car “to blend in”. Then, having “painstakingly” investigated the planet, he eventually files an update to the Guide, changing the entry from…
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Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Part IV: Is That So?
File this one under personal attitude, because we’re not going to be diving knee-deep into tritone-infested waters here. More of a generalised New Year type reflection, really. We’re all prey from time to time to concerns about how we’re perceived by others – band members, other musicians, management, audience, the press, the world, the dog… It’s…
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Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing, Part the Third – Putting a Sock in It
It’s so tempting isn’t it? You’ve got this great band, you want the world to know about a gig you’ve done or a fantastic new album you’re releasing. So you think about creating a sock puppet (an online pseudonym) and giving yourself a gushing five-star review on some website or another. Soooooo tempting… RELAX, DON’T…
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Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing 2.0
Don’t Mess With Mr Inbetween. For my cynical, sarcastic and often downright rude rundown of some of the cheap flimflam tricks musicians use to promote themselves, see here. Here though, are some further observations, and this time … it’s digital. Let’s say you’re an act or a venue and someone’s approached you offering to promote…
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!!!The Secret of Jazz!!!
The world of jazz education has been blown wide open and rendered irrelevant by this revolutionary new invention. Forget the courses, the books, the practising, paying dues. Introducing… Improxatin™ ContrixoLydalot-251! Here’s the science bit… Formulated in a secret Swiss laboratory by our world-class team of neurochemists, necrogeneticists given unique access to the DNA of deceased…
Jason Lyon Music 