I have absolutely never been good at ‘meeting people’.  This seems to be because generally people think I am an arrogant arse on first impressions, and then over a year or two they either decided that they had been wrong and that I was okay really, or they didn’t.  This happened throughout my childhood – it would always take a couple of years to settle in anywhere – so when I went to university I thought I would make an effort to change, and to be more open, more approachable, more friendly and to try and really enjoy the totally new social world in which I was about to be immersed.  It was a complete disaster.

From the safe distance of half a lifetime away I think trying to be open and friendly just made me come across as insincere a lot of the time, because it didn’t really come naturally to me.  It didn’t help that I was moving from an expat to a parochial British environment, so all my social etiquette and habits were different, but my accent was sufficiently English that I didn’t benefit from the same leeway other foreigners were afforded.

Anyhow, one disastrous year in Manchester and I fucked off to Glasgow and decided not to bother trying to interact with anyone, that I would just get on with my own shit as I always had done, and that if people wanted to be friends they could fucking well come to me when they were ready.  That’s always how I’ve lived my life anyway, and so that’s what I went back to, only with the shell rather thicker than it was before my Manchester misadventures.  After a couple of years (as had always been the norm in the first place) my classmates slowly started to realise that I might be alright after all, and I made some good friends.  Quite a few people never really came around, but fuck them, they were mostly cunts in the first place.  And thus my standard path to forming friendships was pretty much cast in iron forever more: don’t expect anyone to like you, don’t fucking worry about it one way or another, but be open enough to them changing their minds when they get round to it and just get on with your own shit in the meantime.

All that probably makes me sound like the worst possible person to be giving advice on the art of schmoozing at conferences, where you tend to get about a sentence and a half to make a good impression and no more.  But actually the fact that I fucking hate meeting new people, and tend to make an arse of it anyway, might possibly mean that for most real music people, who tend to be far more awkward and far less socially confident than your average punter, maybe the stuff I’ve learned might be of some use after all.

I did eventually learn to overcome my naturally antisocial instincts actually, at least in a manner of speaking.  During the last couple of years of my university career and the first couple of my professional one I moved around a hell of a lot.  From the Summer of 1997 to the Spring of 2002 I moved from Glasgow to Groningen to Cape Cod to Glasgow to Cape Cod to Montreal to Manchester to Cambridge to Wiltshire to Kingston upon Thames, where I finally stayed put for just over three years.  So that’s ten moves in the space of five years. I can promise you I was emotionally pretty worn out by the end of it, but I had at least learned to make friends a lot faster.  More importantly, I suppose, I had learned to be a lot less bristly when speaking to new people, less afraid of being isolated in a conversation with someone I knew nothing about, without ever losing the attitude that if someone didn’t like me then I just didn’t fucking care.

So I am getting better.  But I still curl up with embarrassment on the inside whenever I decide to screw up some courage and just blunder up to someone and introduce myself.  So anyway, here are the things which work for me when it comes to going to music industry events and hoping to bump into folk who might be interesting to work with in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

There is only one thing I care about happening in Edinburgh this week, and that is sweet, sweet sleep.  After the Scottish Showcase at the Old Queen’s Head last night (brilliantly put together by Anthony and Alice from God Don’t Like It, God bless their odd-couply socks) we stuffed everyone back in the van and I drove the eight hours back from Lahndan just in time to drop everyone off for a sleep and come straight to work.  So my brain is now in a puddle in the bottom of my shoes, and bollocks to gigs this week.

And you know what?  There’s fuck all happening in Edinburgh this week.  Yes, genuinely fuck all.  Unless I miss my guess which, let’s face it, wouldn’t surprise anyone there really isn’t a single gig that I would personally be heading to this week.  And you know, that might be the first time since I started writing this weekly listings post that this has happened.

Anyhow, in the absence of my anyone else’s shit to pimp, I suppose I should just pimp some of my own shit, because on Thursday night Jesus H. Foxx and Meursault are playing at the Go North music industry booze-a-thon in Inverness, before Meursault head on to play at the Rockness Festival on Sunday.  The Foxx have just released a teaser from their debut album, a track called Jeff & Josephine, which you can find on their blog, here.

As well as musicky things, you’ll find Derick and Olaf from Born to Be Wide up in Inverness, hosting four seminars over two days at the Ramada Jarvis Hotel on the subjects of bands who do everything themselves*, band management, alternative ways to making money out of music and getting your music synched to TV or film.  The full details are on their MySpace page, and I recommend getting along if you can, because these seminars can be very useful.

Even if the chat itself can get a little derailed into amusing anecdotes at times which, whilst highly enjoyable, are not of all that much practical use, you can generally spot the people you want to have an extended chat with later on and then collar them in the bar when they’re vulnerable – so there are several ways to get a bit of extra value out of these things.

And, of course, it will be a monumental piss up.

Jesus H. Foxx – Jeff and Josephine

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*Rather hilariously including our own Neil Pennycook as a representative of a band who, and I quote from the flyer: “book their own tours, organise their own festivals, release their own records, and manage to make money”.   Money?  Money? Where the fuck is my yacht in the fucking Bahamas then?