Club Scout

Hi my name is Shola, I live in London and consider my self to be a music promoter in more ways than one. On one hand I do press for various artists including Natasha Bedingfield, Alicia Keys and Eliza Doolittle (www.myspace.com/elizadoolittlemusic) and on the other I organise nights all over London town. I’ve never considered my self to be the cream of the crop when it comes to promoting nights but I enjoy it, earn a little extra cash and hopefully give people a good night. My most recent night was at a popular London venue called Scala, which has played host to some of the most well-known artists out there including Scissor Sisters, Massive Attack and much more. I name drop these big bands for a reason, because obviously they’ve used the backstage area which became a prominent problem on my night. Yes, it’s small and can become very hot at times, but surely the music is the most important thing? Anyways, Saturday 29 March I did my first night there, which was a mixture of House and Live Music. Devils Gun, which are a mix of Wiley, Aphex Twin and Daft Punk played. Headliners were Robots in Disguise. T

hey’re the kind of band that you see on a Saturday night and go away thinking they’re a great live band but you don’t necessarily need to know anything else about them. They played to a packed out crowd who seemed to lap with their mix of electro, indie and eclectic stage antics. The night for me personally, wasn’t so good…too many glitches, too many minor problems which when added up put a really damper on the night. Trivial things like lack of alcohol or insisting on a closed sound-check (which went on for almost two hours!). Overall the experience was one to be swiftly forgotten and also remembered. I love promoting it’s one of the greatest things in my life, the excitement you have when a booking agent confirms a band you REALLY want to play and also seeing excitement on forums in the build up to the night. On the night, once the sound-check, guest-list, rider and various other elements are out of the way you can really start enjoying yourself (oh, and apologising to your mates, who have made the effort to turn up, only for you to ignore them because you’re running around like a headless chicken).

I strongly recommended anyone to do it. It’s pretty straight forward but remember this, always expect the first night to be shite and never expect to enjoy yourself for the first few hours, it’s a hard job but if we didn’t have promoters then we wouldn’t see our favourite bands because there’d be no-one to put it together! Right now I’m in the process of organising my next night which takes place at the uber-trendy and newly built Proud Galleries. I went to see the new place on the opening night and it was brilliant! It was nice catching up with everyone and seeing Lethal Bizzle and The Enemy play. Right, on that note I’m off, I’ll keep you all in the loop about the next one. Oh and listen to Sting, he’s very good Peace