I Hate Mornings

Why are you spending time trying to get reviews from local hacks? In this article I look at how you can use social media and real life people skills to create your own reviews from casual audience responses.

“Did you see his name in the local paper?”¹

You write great songs. You practise over and over. You play your heart out on stage. And all for what? So you can open the local music magazine three weeks later and see your picture alongside a glowing hyphen-heavy description of how your gig was quite good. A good review validates all your hard work. Doesn’t it?

Yes and no. Mostly no. For a modern-day musician who is interacting with people around the world using all kinds of new and exciting internet technologies, a review in the local rag is almost worthless. Which is lucky, because if you’re a modern-day musician doing lots of exciting stuff on the internet your local music press won’t have a clue who you are or what you do.

val(localReview) = ?

Gig reviews in the local press just aren’t relevant any more. Think about why they were useful in the first place:

• they describe the live experience in (hopefully) an interesting and colourful way so you can decide if it’s the kind of thing you would like;
• they compare the band to other local bands, establishing a spectrum of local music with a particular pecking order so you can decide which bands you like;
• they act as a filter and a recommendation system, reducing the thousands of bands and gigs in your area down to a manageable few so you don’t get overwhelmed when you’re deciding who to like.

Maybe it’s just me, but none of that seems relevant or necessary given that even the most technophobic bands have at least a Myspace page these days. We don’t need a description of the gig because we can look up live videos on YouTube. We don’t need to know the pecking order of local bands because our appreciation of music isn’t limited to our local area, and we can compare bands from around the world in a few clicks. And as for filtering and recommendation systems: I trust recommendations from people I actually know, and I get them from people sharing their favourite tracks and bands on Last.fm, Spotify, Blip.fm, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

So stop worrying about getting the local review. Start thinking about whether your friends and fans will share their experience, and whether you’re giving them the opportunity and tools to do so. I know most audiences won’t be as geeky as mine. They won’t all bring their own cameras and upload photos and videos as soon as they get home. So do it yourself. Get a friend to video a few songs at each gig, and post them on YouTube. Then tell the audience at the gig that they can see themselves on YouTube and share it with their friends. Easy.

How do people know who to trust without reviews?

Why do reviews have to be written? Why do they need to be published in magazines? Why do they need to take effort and time to write? Why do they need to be so formal?

Vox pops (one-sentence interviews of people in the street, from ‘vox populis’ – the voice of the people) have been a mainstay of television news for decades. People implicitly trust the random statements of the “man in the street”. Unlike the smoothly rehearsed newsreaders and the clever, slimy politicians, the man in the street isn’t trying to trick you. He has no agenda. We probably (although we don’t admit it) think he’s too stupid to think of doing anything except blurting out the truth when faced with a shiny video camera.

Use responses instead of reviews

So make your own vox pops. I’ve used 12seconds.tv, but almost any online video service will work. Or just film them on your phone then edit and post them later. Put them on your website, or your Myspace page. How could people not like you when they see good, normal people saying how cool you are, or how much fun they just had watching your gig.

And you can extend the vox pops idea in all kinds of ways. At its core, it’s just a casual review. And casual reviews can come in many forms. If your fans are on Twitter, check what they tweet during your gig, and feature the tweets on your website. If they upload photos, that’s a great testimonial in itself – they enjoyed your gig enough to take photos, edit, upload and tag them. Stick them on your website too. And how about the friends and acquaintances who email you the next day to say what a great time they had? Use it all!

People want to connect with you

If people really enjoy what you do, they will want to let you know. The medium of congratulation will vary with the audience: teenagers like to loiter at the side of the stage while you coil leads then grunt something unintelligible but positive; students tend towards a handshake and “That was so good. Really.”; and the oldies prefer an email or maybe a floral card with their address printed on a little gold sticker on the back. All of these can be captured with a little confidence and ingenuity.

At the very least, prepare a quickfire question to catch them off guard. Something like this:

Teenager: “Uh, thx dude. ‘s rul gud. Yeah.” You: “No problem. How would you describe the band in three adjectives?” Teenager: “Wha? Uh, dunno, like… Uh, maybe ‘indie-prog-folk’, uh, ‘intense’ and, uh, ‘beautiful’?” You: “Perfect. Thanks. That’s actually really insightful. Come and get a photo.” Teenager: “Uh, ok.” You: (putting your arm round them) “Ok. Smile. Ready? 3…2…1… Brilliant. Good to meet you, man. What’s your name?” Teenager: “Gary.” You: “Hi Gary. Hey, listen. Write down your email address and I’ll send you a link to the photo.” Teenager: “Oh. Sure.” You: “Cool. See ya.”

Gary’s gamble has paid off, and he has a story to tell his mates. You have a photo, a response and an email address. Everyone’s happy.

When someone goes to your website to see if you’re the kind of band they will like, they will find all this evidence of other people, real people, who enjoy being your fans. And that’s better than any 5-star review from the local music mag.

Geeks respond publicly

Geeks like all kinds of music. But they tend to like other geeks more than non-geeks. So it doesn’t matter what style of music you write or what scene you’re into. When you start publishing stuff on the internet and using social media to communicate your ideas and news (which you absolutely should if you want to survive), you’re going to get some geek fans. And you’ll quickly find that there’s nothing better than having geek fans.

Geeks respond publicly. They respond quickly. They tell other geeks about what they are doing and thinking in an intelligent and efficient way, and their responses are searchable and shareable. Let me give you a few examples.

Ben Werdmuller: the quickest reviewer in town

It was the day after Ben’s Big Gig, and I was lying in the park trying to make inroads into the Guardian Saturday cryptic crossword with Xander and our ladies. I thought I had at least 24 hours of quiet before the storm of responses, emails, phone calls, blogging and video editing started.

So I was shocked, and indeed stunned, when Xander noticed that Ben Werdmuller had already reviewed the gig. And not just in a casual way. This was a serious, intelligent, eloquent review packed with hyperlinks and references. It even had the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall photo at the top, and the live video stream embedded at the bottom. Go and check it out now. This is gold: Ben Werdmuller’s review of Ben’s Big Gig.

Garrett and Adrian’s videos

Later in the week Garrett mentioned that he had taken a few videos at the gig on his Flip. Although I had heard good things about Flip cameras I assumed the sound quality wouldn’t be up to much, so I was planning to use some little bits of Flip video edited in with the main Bambuser stream from the gig.

I was wrong. The Flip video captured the audio and the atmosphere of the gig amazingly well, and gave me a whole new perspective on the event. Like Xander said, “It looks even better from the front ;)”. I posted the video of Turn It Off And Turn It On Again later that evening, and there are more to come.

As if that wasn’t enough (and this is where Twitter comes into its own), Adrian noticed me posting the video and casually dropped this bombshell:

“Wondering if I should upload some of the 3GB of video I took at #BensBigGig”

Once I get hold of Adrian’s video, and Garrett’s, and mine, and the Bambuser stream, and the 12seconds audience responses, and the Flickr photos, I’ll be able to knock up a brilliant highlight reel of the Big Gig, and even edit together some multi-camera live versions of some of the songs. God bless the geeks.

Phil Campbell is a one man video streaming army

There’s a whole other post about Phil and his video streaming magic in the pipeline, but I couldn’t miss him out of this little geekfest. Because he didn’t just sort out all the live video streaming and the Rezpondr page. He recorded no less than 10 AudioBoos about it on the day and followed up with a review of the tech the next morning, providing a perfect talking point for the post-gig tech conversation.

Conclusion: “Get the net”²

It’s not difficult to draw a conclusion from all of this. But in case you’ve skimmed the rest, here are the take-home points:

• Stop caring about the local music press. Waste of time.
• Turn casual responses into usable reviews.
• Embrace the geeks. But not physically. They aren’t used to that. ;)

Footnotes

1. The Kinks: Did You See His Name? (from The Kink Kronikles, 1972)
2. Wayne’s World, 1992

Ben’s Big Gig was ridiculously successful.

We sold out a 200-seat theatre and had an online audience of about 300. The sound was great, the people had a good time, 500 Twitter messages floated past on the big screen, and I almost remembered all the lyrics.

Wandering through the lobby after the show, I saw a lot of smiles. It was a feelgood gig, and I can’t help but think that part of that was due to the feeling of involvement everyone got from the Twitter messages coming in from the outside. Everyone felt part of a bigger event.

Some very cool people pulled through.

I’m amazed by the goodwill and generosity of all the people who helped out with the promotion and production of the gig. There are way too many to mention by name, but I have to thank Xander Cansell for writing emails, posting videos, enduring rehearsals, editing slideshows and keeping everything running smoothly backstage. And Phil Campbell for putting together the Ben’s Big Gig Rezpondr page, dealing with blocked ports and broken video mixers, interviewing, AudioBooing and taking responsibility for the video streaming. Both legends.

We pushed some boundaries

I saw the Big Gig as an experiment from the start, and because of that I made some tricky decisions about the technology we used. If the gig was a success, I wanted it to be something others could use, recreate and build on. So I went for the DIY approach wherever possible. A couple of weeks before the gig, I was approached by Streaming Tank, the company who broadcast the “DIY” Sandi Thom sessions to see if I wanted to use them. They seem like a nice bunch, but I opted for Phil, Bambuser and some hectic last-minute network testing instead.

Phil has already posted some thoughts about the streaming setup, and I’ll definitely be blogging more about how well it held up and how we would do it next time.

So, what’s next?

The day after the Big Gig was fine. I relaxed, told stories, relived the glory moments, did the crossword in the park and enjoyed the quietness where the internal monologue of todos and tasks used to be. But there’s an empty feeling you get a couple of days after finishing something that big. Xander and I were both feeling it:

quitexander: @ihatemornings dude. Suffering slightly now from come-down after #bensbiggig! Feeling this may last a while :) You free for a chat tonight?

ihatemornings: @quitexander Also working in pub (JT). Also suffering #bensbiggig comedown. Let’s talk later. ;)

So we did. And there was a lot to talk about. What do you do after a Big Gig? A bigger gig? Some smaller gigs? Something else? We haven’t figured that out yet. But what we know is that we learned a lot by putting on such an ambitious event without a label, a manager, a promoter or a sponsor. And part of the Big Gig plan was to share that learning with the community so that musicians (and others) can build on our success. So we’re going to take some time to write some good blog posts, put together a website that links up all the online artifacts of the gig, and answer a lot of questions.

I think blogging comes into its own when there’s actually something real and interesting to talk about, and I hope that Ben’s Big Gig will provide some conversation-fodder for a little while. Leave your messages and questions in the comments, and let’s talk. ;)

[photos by Garrett and Phil]

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