A Day in the Life

What's it like? How does it feel?

In the music industry you learn to ”walk like an Egyptian”, if you know what I mean: a beer in one hand and the other hand paddling through a crowd. There are eight scenes, spread around town, but most of the activity is centered around a concert hall right next to the Radisson.

I arrive about 4 PM for a seminar on the US market. It's cool. Most of the audience is Danish. They ask questions in very poor English. I want to ask something, just to flaunt my mastery of the language, but I don't. Naturally I don't.

In this game I am the water-boy. The main man is The Artist. He is not signed up for today. He's home writing songs or something. He's on a hot streak after having participated in a singer-songwriter seminar with 20 other artists. His daimon told him to write four songs the same night.

Then there is The Manager. The Manager knows about 25% of the Musicians in town, maybe more, and a lot of nice looking girls too. You want to stick around when he does his thing. He is also known as The Great Networking Guy.

Tony is bald, white, British. He is in charge of a venue in London. The Artist has a gig there this summer, and it's his first concert abroad, and everybody's real excited about it. He's got four musicians, all drummers of education, but playing different instruments in the band, of course.

”I've gone to the last four SPOT-festivals. I like it here. It's a nice city”, Tony says. He wears a second hand jacket with the NYPD logo on the shoulder. He's got some sort of African talisman around his neck.

I'm a little surprised. Not that it's not a nice city. But I mean, this guy is from London. Why go here to listen to music every year? SPOT isn't exactly Roskilde. It's more like a convention for people in the business, with live music everywhere you turn.

”It's better when the sun shines,” Tony's friend from England explains. ”There are all these blond girls here, and all the dairy products make them look real healthy, if you know what I'm saying, and all the bicycling gives them great legs”.

Someone comes around. It's a friend of The Photographer. The Photographer is a real pro. He's from Iceland and got one of these weird names that sounds like a web alias. He's done some photos for the The Artist, for the next record, and we are really lucky he did them too.

The someone that I don't really know talks about a concert with Bloodhound Gang the other night. Same town, unrelated to the festival. The drummer pissed all over the lead singer, who just kept on singing, it seems. He also pissed into his cap, and then the lead singer put it on his head, and someone in the band puked a lot.

Everybody laughs. ”Nice to see you.” ”We'll just go to the other scene, check out what's going on”. "Talk to you later". We head off in another direction. Then the Swedish-Japanese girl comes along. She's got a great show, everybody says.

That and ”wow”, when they hear about her ethnic mix. The boys, that is. She's really sweet too, but not anything like what I would have expected from the reviews, but then again, I haven't seen her on stage yet. She's going to do a duet with The Artist tomorrow.

So, we talk a little, then move into a crowd getting high on Lucie Baines. It's a rap act. They got this really great jazz musician, Kresten Osgood, playing keyboards. It's a rocking good show. Very pro. There's music that moves you, and there's music that makes you move.

SPOT is all about promoting new names, or it used to be. There are a lot of established names this year. It's increasingly become a venue to promote music abroad, with about 30 representatives of international record labels, counting the ones doing the seminars.

Me, I do PR. I'm new to this business, so it's my job to keep eyes and ears open, learn the ropes. It's very hard work. I have to listen to all this music, drink beers and receive free promotional CD's from people. I have to shake hands a lot, and say: ”Nice to meet you” and ”How are you doing”.

It's always like that, the first year and a half. You don't want to come off as too pushy. You just do your thing, blend in with the people, and take notes. The Manager is really busy. It's an important event. He did a lot of ground work last year, promoting things, contacting new people.

Already this year, The Artist has become a known act. The Radio Host knows him. That's very important. He has red jeans on. He is all smiles. Radio Host has given us a lot of air play this year. Some producers have heard about The Artist too. So, it's basically catching up for The Manager, this year.

Later tonight, around 11:30 PM, there's a concert with Outlandish, the Arab guys who have had a couple of hit singles, including the remake of Khaled's Aisha. I feel a little spent after three concerts, so I go home to take a shower, update the column, then off again to the concert.

It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

[Report from The SPOT Festival, 2-3 June 2006, Aarhus Denmark.]

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