I'm Executive Producer at Gearbox Records and co-owner at jazzlotion,with forty years' experience in creating, performing, promoting and marketing music.
I've worked with everyone from major record labels and start-ups to independent artists and musicians.
What I've learned, and continue to learn, may help you do whatever it is that you do a little better.
Why not get in touch and let's talk about it.
I started out in my late teens as a guitar player in various bands while doing sessions for Island Records and Chappell Publishing. In 1975 I set up Pebble Beach Sound Recorders, a recording studio on the West Sussex coast and whose clients included Ian Dury, The Stranglers, Tim Hardin, The Adverts, Penetration, Nick Lowe and Slade.
As a freelance record producer during the 1980s I worked with artists including Wasted Youth, Matumbi, Big Country, Praying Mantis, Gary P. Nunn and the Pride of Texas, Edoardo Bennato and Splodgenessabounds. As a guitarist I played on many recording sessions, TV shows and commercials including Alexis Korner, Spitting Image, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Harry Enfield, Radioactive, KYTV and Who Dares Wins.
After a three year sabbatical running the Jazz Department at Tower Records’ UK flagship Piccadilly store, I left to run Sony Music’s newly opened Sony Jazz division, and over the following ten years worked with many of the finest artists in the world including Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Hugh Masekela, The Bad Plus, Terence Blanchard, Béla Fleck, Jane Monheit, Angélique Kidjo, Martin Taylor, Tower Of Power, Clare Teal and Keb’ Mo’. In 1999 I set up sonyjazz.net which was acknowledged as a pioneering music website that encouraged user-generated content and reviews by jazz fans.
After leaving Sony in 2005 when the company merged with BMG, I set up my consultancy Music Project Management and worked with SonyBMG, SellaBand, Dune Music, P3 Music, Nicolosi Productions and Jazz Cruises. I subsequently took on a full time role as SellaBand’s Head of UK Operations and Head of Global A&R, recording over 40 albums with the pioneering direct to fan platform before the company was sold in 2010.
I then became Communications Director for Dune Music and the Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz development programme, launched JazzLotion with producer Tony Platt, created the Forging Ahead workshop helping musicians market their music events, and kept up my consultancy working with artists, bands and companies. I’m currently Executive Producer at Gearbox Records, a vinyl audiophile record company.
I’m sure you’ll have some suggestions…..
Vanilla Fudge – You Keep Me Hangin’ On
Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah
Joe Cocker – With A Little Help From My Friends
Cream – Crossroads
Wilson Pickett – Hey Jude
Santana – Black Magic Woman
Detroit featuring Mitch Ryder – Rock And Roll
Robert Palmer – Sailin’ Shoes
Aretha Franklin – Respect
John Mayall with Eric Clapton – All Your Love
In no particular order I rate these ten of the best double albums. I haven’t included compilations (so no ‘Nuggets’ or ‘Bumpers’) and hope you will add your own to the list.
So, here goes…
The Allman Brothers Band – At Fillmore East
Manassas – Manassas
The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street
The Beatles – White Album
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland
Cream – Wheels Of Fire
Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
The Grateful Dead – Live Dead
Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive
Fleetwood Mac – Tusk
Great looking video for the new Lowdi Bluetooth speaker. I haven’t checked one out yet but will probably do so.
A short and beautifully shot film to introduce Cereal, an interesting new West Country based magazine about food and travel. Update: I finally bought a copy of the magazine and it’s excellent.
I’ve been a fan of Ben Sidran since his Blue Thumb albums in the early seventies, and was aware of him playing and writing on Steve Miller Band albums. He’s smart, swings like crazy and has consistently made great jazz while writing and maintaining a respected academic career. Here Ben discusses and reads excerpts from his book ‘Jews, Music and the American Dream’, giving new insights and meaning to a fascinating and thought provoking piece of work.
Reading in The New York Times about the closure of this famous delicatessen after 75 years made me feel sad, although I had never actually eaten there. It was always good to know that it was a New York fixture that served the same food in the same way for so long, and whenever i wanted to I could drop in. But i didn’t and I missed it. Moral: next time you want to go somewhere, do it before it closes.
François Vautier’s wonderful experimental film homage to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Blade Runner, shown at World Expo Shanghai 2010 and presented by Open This End.
What I have to Offer from Eliot Rausch on Vimeo.
This is wonderful… excerpts from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s (Synecdoche and New York) address to a BAFTA screenwriters conference with added images by filmaker Elliot Rausch.
a jazz guy, blues fanatic, country picker, soul man, a rock 'n' roll doctor from the college of musical knowledge inoculated with a phonograph needle