Not a music post this time I'm afraid, but the story of how this all came about and, hopefully, where it's all going.
This time 12 months ago, I was a night shift manager for a multi product retailer, working stock and deliveries from 7pm until 7am. One week before my 12 week probationary period was up, 24 hours after helping with the stock take, which I'd help sort the warehouse for, I was told I was unsuitable for the role and my contract was terminated. Now, there's a lot more to it than that, suffice to say I'd been royally shafted for no reason whatsoever. Christmas came and went, we celebrated my little boys first one as best we could and 2012 began. I continued signing on, continued looking for work, but to no avail.
Then something rather cool happened. In April this year, I started listening to some great bands, on Twitter, that I'd never heard of, Euphoria Audio being the first. I then found out that none of these bands were signed! Then more bands came along, then more, and more, and it suddenly became apparent that the wealth of unsigned talent out there was far more than a lot of people could ever imagine, and i needed to set up a new account dedicated to sharing these bands, and BritRockArmy was born. So, I shared their music around, I mentioned them, I posted videos and songs and did what I could to get these great bands heard by as many people as I could. Now I'm not claiming to be the only person doing this, there are some awesome supporters out there, too many to mention, but if they read this, they'll know who I mean.
By the time July came along, my new hobby was taking up more and more of my time. Much to the annoyance of my extremely supportive fiancee, I was constantly on my phone, tweeting about one band or another. I realised I needed more than just a twitter account to cater for the number of great u signed bands out there. So the BritRockArmy facebook page was born. Designed to be another outlet for these bands, giving them the chance to post links to their music, for fans to share their favourite unsigned bands, and for a lot more other than just mentions and tweets. So I ran with the twitter and Facebook pages, and everything was cool, but still not quite enough. There was still something missing. Eventually after a little bit of tinkering and experimenting, this blog came about and has been more popular than I could ever have imagined. Numerous requests from bands I'd not been in contact with before, emails from other new bands, asking to be featured and 2 amazingly popular international artist posts, one of which has lead to an email from the artists management company regarding interviews and reviews!!
The Show by messagetovenus
So where is all this leading? Well, let me answer that for you. The only natural progression I see for BritRockArmy is to go into the live event market. Now, obviously, I've announced the 2 gigs for March, I have a third on the cards, and hopefully a fourth on the way too :) I'm not looking to compete with anyone, I'm simply giving brilliant, unsigned bands another avenue for playing in front of a live crowd. Who in their right mind could take issue with that?
Now here's where it gets exciting. I had a meeting today with my local Chamber of Commerce about joining a scheme they operate in conjunction with Job Centre Plus. This scheme gives support to people looking at going into self employment! Yes you heard it here first, BritRockArmy is going into business!! I'm extremely excited about this as I hope all the fans and bands are. As I said to one of the bands booked for a date in March, I'm not going to promise you the Earth, just the opportunity for a lot of great bands to come and play in a city a lot have never had the chance to play. Things will hopefully get rolling now and everything will be ready to Rock N Roll quicker than you can say Hell Yeah!! I've got a meeting with a venue on Wednesday, and I'm hoping the chance will arise to have an event or 2, or 3, this side of Christmas.
Watch this space for info as it becomes available!!
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